


“all you feel is…”

by Wynkat



Category: Adam Lambert (Musician), American Idol RPF, Glam Rock RPF, Tommy Ratliff (Musician)
Genre: Depression, Disability, Disabled Character, Future Fic, Grief, Hurt/Comfort, Injury, M/M, Sex, Trauma
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-01-20
Updated: 2011-01-25
Packaged: 2017-10-14 22:16:44
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 12
Words: 39,168
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/154062
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Wynkat/pseuds/Wynkat
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Tommy had everything he ever wanted, the life of a touring musician, awesome friends, financial security, a bright future. One rainy night an accident took it all away.  Now Tommy has choices to make and new realities to face. It’s up to him to decide if he’s strong enough to face what he’s lost and reach for what he wants.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Prologue - Images of what might be

**Author's Note:**

> *Please be aware that some parts of this story that may be triggering for some people*
> 
> Betas: the_minx_17 and vlredreign (bless you both!) any remaining mistakes are mine.
> 
> Disclaimer: Oh my gods SO NOT REAL. I do not know these people in real life, I am just letting their passions inspire a story that apparently needed to be told. May this never happen. To them or anyone. Ever. Except for the part about people getting stronger, that part’s okay, the rest really needs to never ever happen.
> 
> Author’s Notes: see the end of the last chapter for references, links and general author babbling about why and how this came into being.

  
Prologue - Images of what might be

  


  
_The Tarot is a visual map of consciousness and a symbolic system that offers insight into professional contribution, personal motives, and spiritual development of each individual. As a map of consciousness, the Tarot represents a facet of the total life experience incorporating the “practical-everyday world” with the spiritual growth and evolution of each person. Basically, the Tarot reflects the opportunity that each individual has to visually see that life is a process of “walking the mystical path with practical feet.”_  
-Angeles Arrien, The Tarot Handbook

 

“Dude, you throw the weirdest fucking parties.” Tommy bumps Adam’s shoulder, nearly spilling both their drinks as he steps up next to him along the railing overlooking West Hollywood.

Adam snorts, switches his drink to his other hand and lifts his arm just enough to let Tommy snuggle in to his side. “Like you mind.”

The gypsy-themed getup that Adam has on- short leather vest, long silk shirt with voluminous sleeves cuffed tight at the wrists and tight leather pants, in shades of purple and red- is gorgeous. The silk is smooth against Tommy’s cheek and warm from Adam’s body heat, the perfect combination, so he rubs his face against it. Adam laughs, so Tommy does it again.

As usual, the whacky costuming looks better on Adam than it does on Tommy, at least as far as Tommy is concerned. Adam of course was all gaping mouth and handsy when Tommy showed up. He’s wearing a dark blue and purple version of the same thing, and doesn’t that just make them look like the fucking Bobbsey Twins or worse, like they are dating or some shit. Still, it makes Adam happy, and, as Tommy was coming to appreciate, silk was damn easy on the skin and eyes, so he figures it’s worth it for the looks he’s getting and the tweets that were sure to flood their accounts when Lee’s photos turned up on line. Again.

“Didn’t say I did. Just. Dude. Where the hell did you find the fire-eater? She’s got some of the sickest tats I have ever seen!”

Adam laughs at that and kisses the top of Tommy’s head, a sure sign that he’s had more than a few drinks.

“Oh, wait… lemme guess. Burning Man.”

Adam shrugs with a happy grin. “Did you meet Max yet?”

“Which one is he?”

“She. The sword swallower.”

“No shit?”

“No shit.”

Tommy sighs happily and leans into the warmth of Adam’s chest. “I fucking love your parties.”

“I thought you just said they were weird.”

“They are, but they’re cool too.” Tommy sighs again and lets his eyes wander across the never-truly still LA night. “I still can’t believe we get to do this again.”

“Hmm?”

“The band, the album, the tour… just. All of it. I mean once around the world was fucking awesome, but twice? And my name in the fucking credits of your album?”

“Hey, you earned that credit.”

“Yeah, but still-”

Adam squeezes Tommy tightly and leans into to growl in his ear. “Are we going to have this argument every time?”

Tommy chuckles and drops his head, his fringe, the dark roots in desperate need of bleach, swinging into his eyes. “Probably.”

They stand like that for a while, just breathing in the reality of the moment. Another album, another tour, and their amazing fucking lives.

“Hey,” Tommy says, not bothering to look up. “You wanna come with me when I do that tarot thing you were going on about?”

Tommy can feel Adam grinning behind him. “Are you actually going to let Robyn read your cards?”

“Shut up.” Tommy twists just enough to bump Adam’s chest with the side of his head and snickers. “You were so enthusiastic about it I figured it had to be like orgasmic or something.”

“Not quite.”

“Yeah, yeah, that’d be your dick. I know.”

Adam laughs. “So they tell me.”

“Modest to the end,” Tommy snarks. “So you coming or what?”

“If you want.”

“Yeah, I want.”

 

***

 

“Robyn!” Adam pulls the lovely dark haired woman into a rib-cracking hug as he and Tommy step past the thick curtain and into the alcove set aside as her “Gypsy Tent”.

“Love the costume,” he says, twirling her around. Tommy’s pretty sure the spin is just to see her skirt swirl and the billion yards of fabric ripple, not that he minds. All the spinning means that Tommy is getting a great view of Robyn’s very bare waist, and when she comes back around to face them, her ample, and well-frame cleavage. Maybe this gypsy theme wasn’t such a bad idea after all.

“You don’t look too bad yourself!” Robyn says with a wink. “Silk and leather is always a good look on you.” She turns to Tommy and smiles, holding out her hand. “Hey, I’m Robyn. You must be Tommy.”

Tommy clasps her hand in his own, it’s warm and stronger than he’d expected. “Yep.”

Robyn laughs at Tommy’s eye roll. He really is trying to get over the fact that tons of people know him on sight, but it’s still just weird some days. “Sorry about that,” Robyn says with a smile. “This loon can’t seem to shut up about you.”

“Loon?!” Adam pouts, loudly.

“Yes. Loon.” Robyn doesn’t even turn to look at Adam, just smacks him lightly on the chest. “If I didn’t know better I’d say the two of you were dating.”

“According to the fans we are,” Adam groans.

“According to your fans we’ve been fucking since that damn AMA kiss,” Tommy retorts, as usual.

“Do I want to know why you two aren’t?” Robyn asks, with a knowing grin.

“He refuses to make an honest woman of me,” Tommy tosses out before Adam can. Adam smiles and dips his head, acceding this round of their on-going game to Tommy.

“Right,” Robyn says, on a laughing breath. “So, which of you wants a reading? I’m guessing it’s Tommy since I did Adam’s just the other day.”

Tommy nods. “Yeah.”

“Have a seat then.” She motions Tommy over to a table covered with black lace over some shimmering red fabric. There’s a lone deck of cards resting in the center. “Do you want to do this in private? Or…”

“Adam can stay,” Tommy says, a little too quickly. He feels odd all of a sudden. His chest has gone all tight and the room feels too small for all three of them and there is no way he is doing this without Adam there, which just seems stupid Tommy thinks, but then the fear is there again and he’s nodding and sitting and holding Adam’s hand. Adam settles himself in the chair beside Tommy without a word, but he doesn’t pull his hand away either.

Robyn raises an eyebrow at him and looks over to Adam and then back to Tommy after Adam shakes his head. “Okay,” is all she says, “so I’ll need you to shuffle the deck and think about what you want to know.”

“Um. Like, the question I want to ask and stuff?”

“Yes. Think about what’s most important to you right now. Something you really want to know the answer to. Or if you’d rather, we could do a general reading – a look at what’s coming in the weeks and months ahead. Sort of asking what the cards think you need to know.”

“Oh. That last one sounds good. Let’s like, do that.”

“Okay.” She places the deck of cards face down in front of Tommy. “So, while you shuffle the cards, think about what’s coming up for you. Think about what you know you will be doing, where you will be, who you will be with, and then think about the blank spots, the places you have questions about. Then just sort of think at the cards ‘tell me what I need to know’ and I’ll do the rest. Okay?”

Tommy nods. “Okay.”

Adam smiles at Tommy and squeezes his hand then drapes his arm across the back of Tommy’s chair, just close enough that Tommy can feel the heat of his body, but not so close that he will be in the way. Tommy shuffles the cards a couple of times trying to think about everything he knows is looming in his life and finally gives up and just focuses on the last thing Robyn told him to do. He chants ‘tell me what I need to know’ at the cards, feeling more than a little ridiculous. He shuffles the cards one last time, hands the cards back to Robyn, and sits back against Adam’s warmth.

“Okay,” Robyn says, and then smiles. “This wont hurt a bit, I promise.”

She shuffles the deck herself a couple more times and then starts to lay them out in a pattern on the table between them. She places one card in the center, another crossing over that one, four others surrounding those two to form a kind of even-armed cross and then a line of four cards along one side. All the cards are face down, so all he can see are their backs – a cross with a yellow top, one red arm, one green arm, a white and blue bottom arm and a flower looking thing at the center, all resting on a background that looks mostly brown but seems to be made up of squares of dark colors.

“So, I’m going to turn the cards over one at a time and explain what each one means and we’ll talk about how they relate to each other and to your question. Make sense?”

Tommy nods. He curls his fingers into his palms, his sense of disquiet pressing at his throat so strongly he can barely breathe.

Robyn reaches out to turn over the first card but Tommy darts one hand out to stop her. “Wait. Um… the cards? Do they actually like see the future, like what will actually happen? Or only what might happen? Or what?”

Robyn shrugs. “Tarot is a form of divination, communication with something beyond ourselves. Call it the divine, the astral, or just a Higher Power connected to ourselves. The information might be completely accurate, or it might not be. Either way, the hardest thing is always, has been since the beginning of time, interpreting the message. All I can do is offer you my best assessment based on years of working with the cards and my own experience with divinatory practice.”

Robyn lays her hand on Tommy’s where it’s resting on the table beside the stack of unplayed cards. As Tommy looks at her face he can see something in her eyes, almost as if she can feel the same tension in the room that he is feeling.

“You don’t have to do this if you don’t want to,” Adam says, his hand coming off the chair to stroke through the hair at the back of Tommy’s neck.

Tommy looks at Adam, sees the calm understanding in his eyes and takes a deep breath. “I know. I just…” He shakes his head. “No, let’s do this.”

Tommy turns back to Robyn and the cards on the table. “You’ve already laid the message out. Not like it’ll do me any good to walk away at this point, right?”

“Maybe,” Robyn says. She glances down. Tommy follows her gaze to where the fingers of her free hand trace the cross pattern on the back of one of the cards. She shrugs, and it’s almost as though she’s answering a question he can’t hear, then she looks up. “Oracles aren’t the easiest things to come to terms with.”

“No. I wanna do this.” Tommy pulls his hand back into his lap and nods to the cards laid out on the table. “Go on. Turn them over. Please.”

Robyn looks at Tommy and then at Adam, who shrugs, then to the cards. She takes a breath and reaches for the two center cards.

“Let’s begin.”


	2. Card 1 (The present) - The Tower

Card 1 (The present) - The Tower

_The picture shows the destruction of existing material by fire. It may be taken as the preface to Atu XX, the Last Judgment, i.e., the Coming of a New Aeon. This being so, it seems to indicate the quintessential quality of the Lord of the Aeon. At the bottom part of the card, therefore, is shown the destruction of the old-established Aeon by lightning, flames, engines of war. In the right-hand corner are the jaws of Dis, belching flame at the roof of the structure. Falling from the tower are broken figures of the garrison. It will be noticed that they have lost their human shape.  
\- Aleister Crowley, The Book of Thoth, The Tower_

 

The pre-tour party swirls around them, voices and music creeping under the heavy curtain covering the doorway of the alcove where Adam and Tommy sit, side by side, with Adam’s tarot reader friend Robyn. Spread out on the table between them are ten tarot cards, all facing down.

Robyn reaches toward the two cards at the middle of the cross. She slides the top card out of the way, flips the bottom card over and pauses.

“What is it?” Tommy asks, glancing over at Adam. Adam’s face looks calm. Too calm. He can feel Adam working to stay still; his arm is nearly vibrating against Tommy’s back.

“Hmm?” Robyn looks up. Her eyes look out of focus, kind of glazed over to Tommy, like she’s not really looking at either of them or anything really.

“Is there a problem?” Tommy asks, leaning forward in his chair.

Robyn shakes her head. “No. Just, sorting through… um… there’s a lot of information buzzing around these cards. It’s a little hard to focus. Sorry.” She smiles, but Tommy can see it doesn’t reach her eyes, it’s like Adam’s tired interview smile when he has to keep going but he has almost no energy left for anything.

“The position of this first card.” Robyn taps the card now lying face up on the table, the second card that had been crossing it, now sits slightly off to the side so that the first card can be seen clearly. “This card can either represent the significator – that would be you, Tommy, or the present situation you’re facing. Given the card, I suspect it’s more likely to be a situation.”

“Um, okay,” Tommy says, biting his lower lip and trying to understanding what she’s saying.

“The card itself is the Tower.” Robyn pauses, her hand hovering over the card, then goes on. “It represents cataclysmic change.”

“Uh, like yeah, I kinda thought that might be the case.” Tommy points at the card. “Can I?”

Robyn nods. Tommy picks up the card and brings it close to get a better look at the red flames, gleaming eye in the sky and fracturing tower that take up the bulk of the card’s image. “So, like I’m guessing this isn’t a good card?” He tries to make a joke of it, but even to his ears, his voice sounds flat and nervous.

Robyn bobs her head. She accepts the card as Tommy hands it back. “Of all the cards in the deck,” she says, fussing with its placement back in the layout. “This is one of the less good cards, yes. It represents a change in everything we know about our lives and ourselves. Generally it’s a pretty destructive card, or representative of destruction coming our way.”

Tommy looks up at Robyn, the pressure and discomfort from earlier back in full force.

“The thing is,” she says quickly. “The Tower isn’t all bad. Think of it like a volcano or a forest fire. Amazing growth comes after great destruction.”

“So, Tommy could break his leg but meet his true love in the hospital?” Adam says with a reassuring smile.

“Something like that, yeah. Maybe,” Robyn replies.

Tommy sits back in his chair, arms folded against his chest, staring at the cards on the table. Adam’s hand is back stroking the hairs at the nap of his neck, it’s reassuring and nice, but it doesn’t change the fact that this tarot thing is nothing like what he expected.

_~~~~_

_Robyn’s hand hovers over the card again. Her breath catches in her throat as the visions twist and spin. She bites back a cry as pain shoots up her arms and across her cheek, all imprints she knows, from long experience, of the possible future the cards are showing her._

_She shakes her head trying to clear away the sheen of blood and stops, caught in the images and emotions tugging at her awareness. She wishes she could agree with Adam, but The Tower in Tommy’s future is more than a simple broken leg. It is the destruction of everything he considers himself to be and watching the future play out across her inner vision…_

 

Tommy is sitting in the back of a cab, his head resting against the rolled up window. He stretches his legs out and presses his face into the glass; it feels glorious against his overheated skin. He tilts a little bit so he can watch the rain carve rivulets through the dust on the window and, just beyond, the starburst prisms of the street lamps that flash by as they approach the freeway on ramp. He’s got a pleasant buzz still running through his veins and a bass line (it’s still a little amazing to him that he thinks in bass lines more than guitar riffs now) that just won’t quit throbbing under his skin.

He and Taylor, who’s half-way to asleep next to him, had danced their asses off at the club, sucked back more than a few shots, mostly bought for them by a couple of fans, and danced some more. Then Tommy had found himself with an armful of beautiful brunet and who was he to say no to that? She was warm and soft in all the right places, had a batch of wicked tattoos running from her neck down her shoulder and, as he was oh so happy to find out, along her side and curving under one of her very full breasts. The fact that she actually had one hell of an I.Q. to go with her ability to suck his brains out through his dick put her high on his list of women he wanted to see again. The fact that she hadn’t asked for Adam’s number when the night was winding down made her damn near perfect.

The cab shudders as the driver shifts lanes and heads for the exit to the 110. Taylor groans and rolls over, falling across Tommy’s lap. Tommy pokes him.

“Tay Tay.”

“Mmm?”

“No sleeping on me.”

“Mmm.”

Tommy laughs. “Fine. Just, like- no sleeping on me in the cab. Okay?” When Taylor doesn’t move, Tommy gets a hand under Taylor’s shoulder and pushes. “Sit up, you.”

Taylor is dead weight in Tommy’s hand, his head lolling to one side like a rag doll. He’s not heavy normally, but he’s certainly not helping at the moment. “Don’t wanna.”

“Tough.”

“Bitch.” He slaps, and misses, at Tommy’s hand.

“Your momma know you talk like that?”

Taylor grunts but sits up, finally. “She taught me.”

“Remind me to ask her out next time she comes to a show.”

“I’ll get right on that.” Taylor snorts a laugh.

A flash of lighting startles them both upright.

“Damn,” Taylor whispers.

Tommy doesn’t say anything, he’s counting. Just as he gets to ten, a rumble of thunder rolls across the night. He nods and smiles. He loves thunder.

“That was close,” Taylor says, craning his neck to see out the window.

“Yep.”

More lightning and thunder follow along with pounding rain. Tommy leans forward, trying to see over the driver’s shoulder, watching the storm roll toward them. It’s amazing, and he loves it. Living in southern California you get used to the long stretches without rain, months and months of dry skies. He finds it funny that it always seems to surprise people when the rain actually does show up, like everyone apparently forgets that California does have a rainy season and that it technically started about two weeks ago. Which means this storm is late, as usual.

Tommy leans back against the window and closes his eyes so he can listen to the rain pound against the cab. He lets his hands rise up to pluck at strings and press chords in the air and smiles, there’s a rhythm in the storm that he’s been trying to capture for years. He lets his fingers go, playing with the sounds in his mind.

Thunder rumbles again, louder and closer this time, almost like it’s inside the cab.

The breaks squeal and the cab lurches to one side, throwing Tommy into the door. Tommy braces his legs against the floor and presses his hands into the back of the driver’s seat trying to stay upright.

The cab swerves and Tommy is tossed toward the driver’s seat and then knocked sideways as the cab spins out of control, lurching into the air as it tumbles and turns over and over. Lights spin past them on every side fractured by the rain.

Tommy hits the side of the door and his face smacks up against something hard and wet and gritty. He squeezes his eyes shut and tries to remember how to breathe as he fights to stay in his seat, wishing that for once he’d worn his damn seatbelt.

The spinning stops.

He can feel the cold rain on his face along with something warm that he really hopes isn’t blood. There’s the glare of a freeway lamp across his eyelids, and for a frozen moment he feels, not safe, but out of danger, then the cab rocks again and crashes into something too fucking close to Tommy for him to ever feel safe again.

As the cab settles, other noises start to register.

Metal grinding as it comes to rest. Glass breaking. People crying out.

Someone’s screaming. It’s probably the driver, or at least it’s coming from where the driver should be. He’s sounds like the hounds of hell are tearing him to pieces.

Someone else is calling Tommy’s name. Probably Taylor. Tommy doesn’t know, he can’t move to see, there’s a pressure against his chest pushing him into the torn cushions, folding his hands against his ribcage.

He takes a breath to answer Taylor and screams, pain blinding him to everything.

A moment later Tommy feels nothing at all.

 

***

The paparazzi and the fans are waiting when Adam arrives at the hospital. They form a solid wall of bodies and cameras, all of them screaming questions at him, demanding answers. He slams out of the car and stalks past them. He can’t care about what they want, not now. He has no smiles to give them, no charm, no glamour. He pulls his leather jacket close, hands in his pockets, and tucks his head down. He doesn’t care if he’ll look like shit in all the photos tomorrow or in the ones that show up on twitter ten minutes from now. All he cares about are the people on the other side of the sliding doors.

“Where is he?” Adam demands, the fear that’s a living thing in his stomach hissing up through his veins.

Monte holds up one hand, stopping Adam mid-charge. “They just took him into surgery.”

Monte looks like shit, like someone dragged him out of bed, which they probably did for him to get here before Adam, and tossed him into the nearest set of clothes they could find.

“Oh god. God,” Adam says, hands clenched tightly at his side. He pivots on his heel, looking for something to grab or hurl. There’s nothing but worried faces. Monte, Brooke, Terrence and Sasha, each of them looking more fragile than he has ever seen them.

“Hey,” Brooke says, stepping into his path. Her face is streaked with make up and tears, her hair coming out of its braid on one side. She looks worn out, they all do and they shouldn’t. They shouldn’t be here. They were all supposed to be getting ready for the next tour, the next round of Glamily time.

“It’s going to be okay,” she says, pulling him into a hug.

“I shouldn’t have let them go off on their own. I should have – “

“There’s nothing you could have done,” Monte says, pressing a hand into Adam’s back. “It would only have been worse if you had been there.”

“Oh, God.” Adam lets Brooke lead him to one of the hideous orange hospital couches in the waiting room. He sits on the edge of one cushion, to tense to really sit but too terrified to move, and looks up at Monte. “How? How did this happen?!”

Monte shakes his head. “CHP is on the scene now trying to piece together the details. All we know is that fire and rescue had to cut Tommy out of the car.”

“And Taylor?”

“He’s okay,” Brooke says, stroking his hand, doing what she always does to try and help him ground. “A few cuts and bruises from when they rolled, but nothing major. They said he can go home in another hour or so.”

Adam nods and then shudders. “I should have sent a driver for them when I found out I wasn’t going to make it,” he says.

“You didn’t know,” Brooke says. “You couldn’t know.”

“And they were smart,” Terrance adds from where he’s standing behind Brooke, one hand on her shoulder. “They knew the drill for club nights. We all do. You drink, you call a cab. So they did. A different car or a different driver – “

“It might have made a difference,” Adam says, cutting Terrance off. He can feel the desperation rising. The need to fix what’s happened. To make it right because he can’t fathom a world where this is real.

Adam wraps his arms around his waist and shakes his head back and forth. “It’s my fault. I should have stopped this.”

“No,” Sasha says, kneeling down in front of Adam and grabbing his hands. “No. Don’t you ever think that. You had nothing to do with this.”

Adam feels like he is going to shatter into a million pieces. “But I brought him into this, I brought you all into this.”

“You brought us nothing but love and joy.” Sasha says, tears streaking her cheeks.

“That could be any of you lying on that table. Any of you!” Adam is shouting now, his face a mess of tears and ruined make up. His mind insisting on showing him the worst outcome of every path and road, past and present. All of them his fault. “Tommy could die because I fucked up!”

“Don’t do this, Adam.” Terence kneels beside Sasha, adding his hands to hers around Adam’s. “Tommy is not gonna die. He won’t. And whatever happens, he is better off, we are all better off for knowing you and having you in our lives.”

Adam stares at Terence. He had said the words himself, but hearing, from someone else, hearing the idea that Tommy might die from someone else makes it all seem so real. Adam chokes on a sob. “He can’t die,” Adam says, all the fight draining out of him, leaving behind only overwhelming fear. “He can’t.”

“He won’t,” Terrance insists, grabbing Adam’s shoulders as he crumbles and holding on tight. “He’s a fighter and we aren’t going to give him the chance to give up.”

 

***

 

He’d always thought that movies showing people standing over their own bodies were full of shit, that there was no way a person would just hang around and watch as their body decided if it was gonna live or die or some shit like that. Except now Tommy’s standing, ghost-like, in an operating room watching a bunch of doctors and nurses pound on his bleeding chest and rapidly rethinking that theory.

Solid bodies are moving around him, he can see them, but he can’t feel them. They’re shouting in distorted stretched-out tones about blood counts and heart rate and this is either the worst episode of ER Adam has ever talked him into watching, or there was something really fucked up in his drink. He wants this all to be a dream, he decides.

A really stupid dream.

He’ll wake up and be on the bus or in his apartment and he’ll call Mia or Adam and tell them about it and Adam will intone for ages about some dream therapy shit he just read and then they will meet up for lunch before rehearsal. And everything will be fine.

Then he’s looking at the body on the table, with its wires and tubes stretching for miles out of its tattooed skin and nope. Those are his arms. His hands with blood all over them, metal and bones jutting up through the skin, and that really can’t be good.

_Please let this be a dream,_ he whispers over and over again.

He tries closing his eyes. Tries willing himself to wake up, but when he opens his eyes again, he can see more doctors and nurses coming, trading places with the old ones. The clock on the wall has shifted. Hours have passed. He can’t actually tell what time it is, which weirds him out in a whole other way, but he can tell that time has passed, somehow. He just knows.

He looks down at his hands, the ones he still has, the ones not on his body on the operating table. They are bloody and broken now too. And they hurt. A whole hell of a lot. And his face hurts. And it’s hard to breath. And there’s so much noise and shouting going on around him.

He’s not standing any more. He can feel the press of cloth and padding against his back and ass and cold air on his toes. He can’t move, he can’t see. All he can do is feel. And everything hurts. It’s like the cab all over again.

Then nothing hurts.

 

***

 

It was a blessing in a way that they had been in LA when the accident happened because it means that most of crew can have their families with them at the hospital for support.

Phone calls go out as soon as they all know that Taylor is safe and that Tommy’s surgery is going to take awhile. Adam sends Lane and Neil to personally pick up Tommy’s mother and sister. His own parents arrive at the same time as Monte’s wife, who’d finally wrangled a sitter for the kids. They all slip past the cordon of the security to wrap Monte and Adam in a giant hug and hold them while they shake and Monte catches them up on the few details they have. Adam just clings to his mother’s hand and waits.

Not long after, Lane and Neil arrive with Tommy’s mother and sister.

“Dia,” Adam says, coming up out of his seat toward her.

“How is he?” Dia asks, her face a mask of worry.

“Still in surgery.”

Dia bites back a sob and closes her eyes. She’s clutching a bunch of wadded up tissue in her hands, turning and tearing them over and over, little pieces falling off like tufts of snow to sink to the linoleum unseen.

“I’m so sorry,” Adam says, only to be cut off by Lisa, who lets go of her mother’s shoulders to get in his face.

“Damn it, Adam! What happened?” Lisa is tiny like her brother, and just as fierce. Her face is red with tears and anger, the light skin Tommy’s always complaining about showing all her emotions.

Right now Adam would rather face anyone else, Simon Cowell on a bad day, a couple of right wing fundies even, than have to answer Lisa’s questions.

“I don’t know. It should have been me… but Tommy and Tay-“

“You said you would look after him! Keep him safe!”

“I know. I tried… but…”

Monte puts a hand on Adam’s shoulder, part hug, part offer to take over. Adam nods and steps aside.

“Dia, Lisa,” Monte says quietly, and Adam is more grateful than ever that Monte is there with his calm, solid strength to hold them all together.

Monte takes one of Dia’s hands and holds it until Dia looks up. When she nods, he looks over at Lisa and offers his other hand to her. Adam can see her wanting to refuse but she doesn’t. She nods and sighs, more a hitch of breath, like she’s holding back a damn of grief, and slides her fingers into Monte’s palm.

“What we know at the moment,” Monte says, looking at Dia, “is that there was a multi-car pile up on the 110. The CHP don’t know who or what started it exactly, that’s what they are checking for, but they’re figuring that at least one factor was the oil build up on the road mixing with the first rain of the season. Too many people out late at night.”

Monte shrugs.

“The cab driver was taken over to St. Joseph’s. No one’s said anything yet about his condition, but the one medic I was able to talk to said it didn’t look too good.”

“Mrs. Ratliff?”

They all turn toward the inner door of the waiting room to see a doctor in surgeon’s scrubs walking toward them. Adam’s heart stops beating and then restarts twice as fast.

“Yes,” Dia says, dropping Monte’s hand and stepping toward the doctor. “I’m Mrs. Ratliff. How’s my son?”

The doctor pulls off his cap and nods at Dia. “They are moving him to recovery now, you should be able to see him in a little while.”

“How is he?”

The doctor looks down at his feet and then back at her before he speaks. “He’s alive. Your son experienced head trauma as well as a punctured lung and several broken ribs.”

“What aren’t you telling us?” Lisa asks, her voice dead-quiet and her face pale.

“Both of Mr. Ratliff’s hands were badly broken and his right wrist was punctured by a piece of metal from the car’s frame.”

“Oh god,” Sash whispers from beside Adam. He can feel her shaking as he tucks her close to his side. Or maybe he’s the one shaking.

“We did everything we could, but we just won’t know the full extent of his recovery until he wakes up.”

“Oh Tommy. No,” Sasha turns her face into Adam’s chest and sobs.

“Pardon me?” The doctor turns toward Sasha and Adam, confusion plain on his face.

“Tommy’s my bassist,” Adam whispers, hugging Sasha to him like a lifeline. “He needs his hands to play.”

 

***

 

Tommy wakes in stages over what feels like days but might only be minutes or hours. His eyes open and close on darkness.

Open and close, open and close.

Each time there is more darkness, though he would swear, if anyone where to ask him, that the darkness held voices and shadows that shifted and changed. He wants to talk to them, tell them he is awake and make them turn on the light but he can never manage to find the words or something.

If anyone really is there and it’s not just his mind playing tricks.

Open and close, open and close.

Finally he opens his eyes to light. There’s just enough for him to see a body standing beside him, the uniform she’s wearing attempting to be cheerful with some kind of creature dancing across her hips. She’s doing something with the tubes near his head, not looking at him, not seeing that he’s awake at last, so he says something. Or tries to. It comes out more like a grunt.

The nurse turns, looks him over. “Nice to see you with us Tommy,” she says with a smile. “I’ll just go let folks know you’re awake.”

Tommy nods and starts to sit up. Pain ignites every nerve ending he has, startling a scream of raw agony out of him.

The nurse is there a moment later, through the haze of pain, pushing him down into the bed and talking gently to him. “Shhhh. Deep breaths. That’s it.”

“Wha… ? What the..?” he tries to ask what the hell, but his brain is too busy processing the screaming messages from his arms and chest.

“Don’t try sitting up right now,” the nurse says. “The doctor will be in in a minute to explain everything, just lie back and try to relax.”

As she steps away, he can see her press a button on the contraption hanging beside his bed. A few moments later the pain changes. He can still feel it pulsing like an angry freight train under his skin, but he kinda doesn’t care any more. He lets his head drop back on the bed and focuses on breathing.

Breathing is really good.

 

***

 

“You look like shit,” Monte says pushing through the door into Adam’s house. He’s got a tray of coffees on one hand and a bag of what Adam really hopes are the groceries he asked for in the other.

“Lack of sleep will do that,” Adam replies with a sigh. He pushes a hand through his hair and comes away with stray bits of glitter. He can’t actually remember when he last had a shower. That can’t be a good thing. “Been on the phone half the morning with the hospital and more doctors than I can count. I’m waiting on a call back from the specialist now.”

“What’s up?”

Adam shakes his head and waves his hands in the air. “Something about mutant strains of zombie bugs that eat antibiotics for breakfast.”

“Um… what?”

“Coffee?” Adam asks, it’s easier than trying to explain and far more important at the moment.

Monte hands Adam one of the two Grandes in his hands and follows him into the kitchen. Adam pushes a pile of take out boxes out of the way so Monte can the bag down and turns to the dining table. It’s covered with papers, notebooks, his laptop, and at least a ream of printouts from various websites. Adam stacks a few of the piles together on one end and waves Monte to a seat.

“Jeez, man.” Monte adjusts one of the stacks of paper that’s threatening to fall over then sits down frowning. “What hit this place?”

“Me?” Adam shrugs. He thumps into a chair, one leg tucked under him, the other starts tapping restlessly on the floor as soon as his bare foot touches the tile. “I’ve been trying to understand everything the doctors are telling Dia and Lisa, but there is just so much. And I don’t know…”

“Adam, man…”

“I know… I do. I just.” He pokes at the cardboard sleeve around his coffee, picking at where the seam is weak and coming apart. “I keep thinking it should be me in the hospital, not Tommy.”

“Don’t.” Monte puts a hand out and Adam clasps it tightly.

Adam stares at their joined hands, his mind spinning the same nightmare scenarios over again.

“I try to tell myself its crazy, but the words won’t stop and now with this infection in his arm…”

“What infection?” Monte asks, squeezing Adam’s hand before letting go and taking a sip of his coffee.

Adam waves his hands at the pile of paper and books. “The antibiotic resistant thing. It’s why they had to postpone surgery again. His right arm is a mess of infection and nothing is working. It’s like one of his monster tattoos has come to life and taken over or some shit.”

“Fuck.”

“Pretty much, yeah.”

“But his other hand is okay, right?”

“So far, yeah. They got the pins set yesterday and everything seems to be holding fine, no infection or anything there. So, yeah, it looks good.”

“Good.”

“Yeah.”

Monte looks down at the stack of papers on the table and pulls one closer. “What’s this?”

“Hmm?”

Monte waves the paper at Adam. “This list of names?”

Adam sighs. One more thing he doesn’t want to deal with. “The label sent it over. They want me to start auditioning a new bassist. For the tour.”

Monte nods and looks at the list. After a moment he looks back at Adam. “They’re right you know.”

Adam takes a sip of his coffee and doesn’t say anything. He doesn’t want to say the words out loud.

Monte presses back into his chair and runs a hand through his hair. Adam can practically see the wheels turning in his head.

“Dia told me that Tommy has at least two more surgeries ahead of him before he’s even into physical therapy. And who knows how long PT is going to take, and that’s not taking this infection shit into account.”

Adam looks away, out the window, anywhere but at Monte, anywhere but the truth.

“Adam…”

Adam closes his eyes. “I know.”

“You can’t afford to cancel the tour for any of us.”

“I know.”

“Do you really?”

Adam opens his eyes and looks at his hands where they are clenched around his coffee. Monte’s leaning toward him, hands outstretched toward Adam, his own coffee forgotten on the table between them.

“I know you want him with us. We all do. But at what cost?”

Adam nods. “I just wish…”

“I know.”

Adam pushes a hand across the table, through the mess of papers, and into Monte’s waiting grip. He gets a squeeze and a nod in response.

Adam can’t help thinking about how things had changed so quickly with one patch of wet asphalt. Everything had been going so well. He wants to scream at the Universe, make promises he can’t keep, anything to make it all go back to the way it was, but he can’t. No one can.

Adam takes a deep breath. It’s time to stop running.

“Okay,” he says with a sigh. “Set up the auditions. Maybe if we’re lucky Tommy can join us for the European leg of the tour.”

 

***

 

Tommy’s awake again. He has been for awhile but just refuses to open his eyes. He doesn’t want to be awake. Doesn’t really want to be alive at this point. He just wants – darkness. Oblivion. Anything other than this endless hell of pain and broken hope that his life has become.

His eyelids flicker, dust or sunlight making them twitch, and he squeezes them shut. He knows what’s waiting for him and he wants to believe for just a little longer that if he doesn’t open his eyes it won’t be true. Except it will. Every fucking time it’s been worse. Another break, another pin, another plate, one more infection.

Moisture leaks from his eyes. He’s sick of calling it tears. Opening his eyes, to blink the offending shit away, Tommy stares up at the cottage cheese paneling above him and waits. Maybe if he waits long enough someone will come in and tell him it’s all a joke. Ha ha! April Fools Tommy Joe! You’re fine and your life is perfect.

A monitor beeps beside his head.

A voice, amplified and tinny, warbles through the door from the nurse’s station calling for some doctor or other.

A branch scrapes across the glass of his window, pushed by whatever storm the Santa Ana’s are throwing at LA this week.

Nothing’s changed.

It’s now or never. And as much as Tommy wishes for never, he’s never thought of himself as a quitter. He takes a breath and raises his arms. It makes his shoulders and chest shake with strain, his muscles are weak from the accident and weeks of lying immobile. He keeps going, flexing his biceps a little more than he needs to, just to feel the burn, pushing his straining tendons to lift the battered remains of his hands into his line of sight.

His muscles scream. His heart races. His lungs ache. And it all feels better than thinking.

The cast of metal and plaster on his left hand is heavy and stiff, holding the broken shards of his fingers and wrist in place. With time, the doctors tell him, all the tiny pieces should knit themselves back together. In time, he should be able to move his hand, stretch his fingers across a fret board and make it sing. In time he could play again. Except…

His right arm ends in a bandaged stump. Where his hand used to be, where he can still feel it twinge and itch, there’s nothing. Just air.

He drops both arms to the bed and it hurts, so he does it again, raising them up, against the screaming in his muscles, up past his sight line and then down, over and over again until all he can feel is the all encompassing river of pain flooding every nerve ending.

He shuts his eyes, gulping air around sobs, feeling the bass in his hands, the strings under his fingers, the pick moving. He can feel Adam pressed against his back, his massive voice reverberating through both their bodies as the music pours off the stage and out into the crowd.

His fingers move in time with his memory and it hurts, even in the hand that no longer exists, it hurts, on so many levels. It hurts to remember the feel of the music under his skin and all around him. Music that he will never…

He tenses his fingers again as hard as he can, tighter and tighter until he’s panting in pain, his arms shaking from stress.

Monitors are screaming around him, loud enough to pierce the chaos in his head. Voices shout. He can feel hands shaking him, pulling at his arms, but he’s too deep in memory and agony, too far into what he can never have again to hear them or care.

The numbness starts, the blissful lack of caring that comes with the drugs that only the doctors can authorize. His muscles unclench. His heart rate slows. His breathing evens out. The pain is still there, all around him like a blanket to keep him warm. And then there’s just darkness.


	3. Card 2 (immediate challenge) - Ten of Swords

Card 2 (immediate challenge) - Ten of Swords

_… this card shows the disruption and disorder of harmonious and stable energy._

_The hilts of the Swords occupy the positions of the Sephiroth, but the points One to Five and Seven to Nine touch and shatter the central Sword (six) which represents the Sun, the Heart, the child of Chokmah and Binah. The tenth Sword is also in splinters. It is the ruin of the Intellect, and even of all mental and moral qualities.  
\- Aleister Crowley, The Book of Thoth, The Small Cards_

 

Robyn turns the next card over and lays it across the first, the one that shows the burning tower. She taps the card twice and looks at Tommy.

“This card sits in the position of immediate challenge, or what is crossing you,” Robyn’s finger is pressing hard enough into the waxed paper that the cards are bending a little under the strain. “Where the first card represents an event in the present, this one represents a challenge related to that event or to how you feel about that event.”

Tommy nods and sits up a bit, not away from Adam’s support, but pulling himself out of his sort of pout. He is a grown up after all, no matter what his sister likes to say.

“Given that the first card kinda sucked, I’m betting that my reaction to it divination-like isn’t going to be great either. I mean, I doubt I’m going to react well to falling out of a tower. I hate heights and shit.”

Adam chuckles. “He really does.”

Tommy watches Robyn. Once again she smiles that almost smile that doesn’t quite reach her eyes.

“Well, you’d be right. This isn’t a happy card, that’s for sure.” She taps the card again. “It’s the Ten of Swords.”

Tommy leans forward and points at the base of the card. “Does that say ‘ruin’ on the bottom there?”

Robyn nods. “It does. Aleister Crowley, who designed this deck, wasn’t a big fan of even numbers, he liked threes and multiples of threes best. He thought they were the most stable units. Each number that came immediately after a three was therefore less stable, a kind of breaking or overloading of the strength that had been inherent in the three ahead of it.”

“Okay,” Tommy says trying not to sound too skeptical.

“I know, it sounds a bit insane, but from a numerological standpoint it makes sense. And for Crowley, who designed this deck, it worked.”

“So the Ten of Swords is?”

“Swords represent air – the mind and thought. Reason. The Ten of Swords is reason divorced from reality. It’s loss and grief and death.” Robyn shrugs. “Ruin. Which in this position suggests that the challenge you face is believing that you have lost something or everything. That the Tower card ruined something you held dear.”

 

~~~~

_Robyn looks across the table at Tommy and sees shadows stretching down his arms, covering his hands. Darkness pulses over his heart and her own heart aches with a resonating grief. The swords of despair hover all around him, she can feel them, shivering in the void, waiting._

 

Lane is waiting for Adam in his dressing room after the concert. That alone is weird, normally she watches the show from the wings by the sound board, but she now she’s holding his cell phone out to him.

They had an agreement, no calls right after the show, not Brad or even whichever current guy he was seeing. That was Adam’s choice. He needed time to just enjoy the high of the show and let the energy settle back down a bit before he started dealing with the world outside the concert hall.

And tonight had been good. The best night they had had since the tour started.

The new bassist, Matt, was finally settling in with the rest of the band. Or was that the rest of the band was finally adjusting to Matt? It should have been simple. Matt was really a whole lot like Longineu. That’s part of why Adam and Monte had finally settled on hiring him. That and he was a damn good bassist. He had long dark hair and was actually taller than Adam, which was weird, but helped keep Adam from thinking about Matt as a replacement for Tommy. And he was mellower than shit. Nothing stuck to the guy. Nothing. Which meant that coming into a group that was essentially in mourning for the guy he was replacing didn’t even faze him. Matt just shrugged and told Adam that he understood, been there, done that and went on practicing.

Matt didn’t lean up against Adam like Tommy did. And he was never just waiting for Adam to fuck with him whenever he felt like it during a song. He actually spent more time with Monte on stage, the two of them rocking amazing rifts behind Adam like some kind of guitar hero pairs champions.

It was good, and it was different and Adam knew that everyone was watching him to see how he would take to Matt. So he smiled and made himself find a way to fit into the new pattern of energy. But it felt really fucking weird. Until tonight. Tonight everything had clicked into place. The band, the dancers, the crowd, even Adam’s voice had cooperated, fighting off the cold that it had been playing with for the last few days. He’d felt like he was on fire, like this was his concert and his tour at last.

And now here was Lane with what could only be bad news.

Her face says it all. This call has nothing to do with the tour and everything to do with family. But Neil isn’t with her, so that means it’s his other family.

Lane hands him his cell, pats him lightly on the shoulder and walks toward the door.

“Your bag’s already packed. A driver will be at the hotel to pick you up in an hour,” she says, one hand on the doorknob.

“But?” He waves his hands to the clutter of costumes and make up around him. Lane just shakes her head.

“We’ll make it work, you need to go.”

The door closes behind Lane and Adam is alone. He’s pretty sure he knows who’s on the other end of the phone but still…

“Hello?”

“Adam?”

He was off by one, its Tommy’s sister, her voice nearly hoarse. She sounds like she’s had way too much too drink or been sick for a week, which means she’s been crying.

“Hey, Lisa.”

“Oh God, Adam. I don’t know what to do. He won’t talk to anyone, not even mom. He just ignores her completely. And last night, he kicked the nurse so hard they had to restrain him to his bed and then he just started screaming so much....” Lisa’s voice breaks for a moment. “They had to sedate him. I don’t know what –“

“Shhh,” Adam says, trying to help from a thousand miles away as she finally falls apart completely. “Shhh, it’ll be okay.”

“Adam. Please. I’m sorry. I know I’ve been a bitch. I was so angry when Tommy first got hurt.”

“It’s okay, we all were.” He reaches up to run his hand through his hair and stops just in time to keep from coating his fingers with sweat and glitter. He fists his hand and presses it against his temple instead.

“I just didn’t know who else to call.”

“I don’t know what I can do…”

“Anything. Just. Please? I know you have the tour and everything.” She pauses and Adam can hear her breathing, deep shaking sobs that she works to get under control. He doesn’t say anything, gives her, and himself, space to try and recover. “I’m sorry. I know things are crazy for you now, but please. Can you come and see him? Try talking to him?”

Adam closes his eyes, all his joy turning rapidly to ash in his stomach. “Yeah, I can do that. Lane’s working on getting me a flight out. I’ll be there as soon as I can.”

Lisa sobs. “Thank you. Thank you.”

 

***

The first thing Adam notices walking into Tommy’s room is how quiet it is. Normally when he’s around Tommy there’s some music somewhere, usually leaking from his headphones, but not now. Now there’s just silence. And that is all kinds of wrong.

Tommy’s curled up in a chair by the window. His knees are pulled up close to his chest and his arms are resting at odd angles on top, bandages and metal bits glaringly obvious in the room’s florescent light.

He looks like he’s asleep, but as Adam gets closer he can see that Tommy’s eyes are open. His gaze is fixed on something outside the window, in the yard beyond, but his eyes aren’t moving, he’s not actually tracking anything. He’s just staring. Like a statue.

Someone’s pulled his hair back into a lose braid so his whole face is exposed. It makes him look so much younger. He looks lost. Adam’s never seen him like this, so… broken.

Adam drops his bag on the floor and steps up beside the chair, his boots squeaking on the linoleum flooring.

“Tommy?”

Tommy doesn’t move, doesn’t even flinch at the sound of Adam’s voice.

“Tommy, hey… It’s me. It’s Adam.”

Adam crouches beside Tommy’s chair, one hand on the armrest, the other poised to brush his knuckles across Tommy’s cheek, but he stops, lost himself. He doesn’t know if he should touch or speak or what to do. Tommy looks like a ghost, trapped between one world and another and Adam just wants to hold him and shake him until he comes back, until he smiles and laughs that small, precious laugh that was only for Adam.

“You came back.” The words are barely audible, the voice cracked and brittle, but they’re there, even if the light still hasn’t returned to Tommy’s eyes and his head is still turned away from Adam. It’s a start.

“Yeah,” Adam says on a shaky breath. “Told you I would.”

“Why?”

“What?”

“Why?” Tommy blinks, slowly, as though his eyelids weigh a ton and then his head finally slides around to face Adam. Only his head though, the rest of Tommy is still frozen and motionless, his broken arms taunting Adam from their strange position on Tommy’s knees.

“Why’d you come back?”

“I said I would. I – “

Tommy’s eyes close. “You had to. You promised.”

“Yeah. I promised you. I promised that would come whenever you needed me.”

Adam shifts around so that he’s kneeling in front of Tommy. Tommy still doesn’t move, he seems like he’s hardly even breathing. Adam watches for a long moment, waiting for the slow rise and fall of Tommy’s chest to be sure that he’s is still alive, still with him.

“But you didn’t,” Tommy says, finally, his eyes still closed. “You left me at the club. Why didn’t you come to the club? I told you I would wait for you.”

“Tommy-”

Tommy opens his eyes, they’re bloodshot around the edges and darker than Adam remembers. He stares right at Adam and his voice has more strength to it, more passion.

“You said you would come. You promised.”

Adam sways backwards, way from the venom in those words. He’s told himself the same thing a hundred times, answered the same way. “I couldn’t. I told you that. The interviews all ran over and then Lane…”

“I waited for you.”

The anger’s gone, replaced by something even harder to hear, it reminds Adam of one of the darker times in his life, of the desolation he felt bouncing from club to club, looking for something he couldn’t find, thought he couldn’t have.

“I know, I’m so sorry, Tommy.”

“I wanted to spend the night with you. To dance with you. But you left me there. And now I’ll never be with you. Never see the world. Never hold your hand. Never play music again.”

Adam leans forward, his hands on Tommy’s thighs, he can feel Tommy’s pain, feel it resonating in his own chest and it hurts so much, how much he’s lost. Adam remembers what it’s like to think that in this moment everything is gone and nothing will ever be right again and he remembers hauling himself out of that pain and finding light and hope again. Even love.

“That’s not true. You’ll get better, Tommy. The doctors- “

“They took my hand!” Tommy rears up from the chair, fury etched across his face. He flails his right arm with its bandaged stump in Adam’s face. Adam falls back onto the floor and scrambles against the wall under the window watching Tommy rage, feeling his own heart break.

“They carved it off my arm! Didn’t even ask me if they could take it.”

“They had to-“ Adam tries to say. The infection was too strong. Adam had argued with the doctors for days about the surgery. He had begged them to find another way.

“They took my HAND! And you let them!” Tommy screams in Adam’s face. “You let them take it!”

“You would have died!”

“Better dead than this!” Tommy waves his stump between them.

“No.” Adam shakes his head. He won’t ever believe that.

“It’s gone! Do you have any idea what that feels like?”

Adam shakes his head not caring that he’s crying. Awareness crashing over him. He’s been in pain before, but he doesn’t know this pain, this kind of loss.

“No.”

“No! No! You can’t know. You have no fucking idea what its like.” Tommy collapses to his knees in front of Adam, onto the merciless tiles, and it makes Adam’s knees hurt just thinking about what that has to feel like, but Tommy is past caring.

Tommy kneels in front of Adam for a long while, his head bowed, tears streaming down his face.

Adam can hear the clock outside in the hall ticking away, machines beeping and nurses talking. He waits for Tommy to speak, he owes him that. For their friendship. For fucking up and leaving him at the club. For not fucking up. Just because Tommy is in pain and he has a right to rage at the universe even if Adam is his chosen point of contact at the moment.

Tommy moves his left hand in its plaster cast over to where his right arm rests in his lap. Adam can see that there are fewer pins sticking out of it now than there were a month ago, that has to be a good sign. Tommy runs the bound up fingers just over the stump of his right arm and out over the space where his hand once was. He gets to the end, where the tips of his fingers might have ended were they still there, and starts over, stroking the air above his arm from just above the stump out to the ends of his former fingers. Over and over, as though he’s petting a cat. A long dead, invisible cat. Adam shivers.

“I can still feel them,” Tommy whispers as he strokes the air. “My fingers.”

The silence stretches between them.

“When I sleep… I play your fucking songs. Did you know that?” Tommy looks up quickly at Adam and then back at his arm. “ _Sleepwalker_ and _Voodoo_ and fucking _Fever_. Over and over and over again until my fingers, all ten of them, hurt so much I want to scream, but I can’t stop because it’s all I know.

“I had the fucking world in my hands!” Tommy stops stroking his arm and raises both arms up. “In my hands…”

“I’m so fucking sorry, Tommy.”

“What do I do now, Adam? What do I do? I can’t even listen to music- it just hurts too fucking much.”

“We’ll figure it out,” Adam says, inching toward Tommy.

“I want them back,” Tommy sobs. “I want my hands back.” he looks up at Adam, his soul stripped bare and bleeding from his eyes. “I just want them back…”

Adam catches Tommy as he falls forward and holds him tight. “I know,” he whispers. “I know.”


	4. Card 3 (Distant past, foundation) - Hanged Man

Card 3 (Distant past, foundation) - Hanged Man

_This card, attributed to the letter Mem, represents the element of Water. It would perhaps be better to say that it represents the spiritual function of water in the economy of initiation; it is a baptism which is also a death.  
\- Aleister Crowley, The Book of Thoth, The Hanged Man_

 

Tommy chews at the polish on his thumb and watches as Robyn reaches forward to flip over the third card in the reading. This one is sitting at the base of the cross formation, below the two cards that are already face up. He almost wants to tell her not to turn it over, that he’s changed his mind. The first two cards were so harsh and her reaction to them so intense, he kind of doesn’t want to know what’s next. But at the same time, he meant what he said, the cards are already on the table. And if there is one thing he has learned being friends with Adam, it’s that if the Universe has a message for you, there is no point in ignoring the signs, because its gonna find a way to get it to you, come hell or … well… tarot cards.

He tugs his thumb out of his mouth and grips the fingers of his hand around it in his lap then looks up at Robyn and nods. He tries to smile, but since she doesn’t smile back, and Adam’s not really smiling either, he figures he missed. Not too surprising.

“This next card,” Robyn says, “is in the position of the foundation. It represents those elements that support you, the things from your deep past that root and ground you.”

Tommy nods, that makes sense as far as it goes.

The new card looks to Tommy like a guy doing some really bizarre form of yoga hanging off one of those Ahnk things Adam was always pointing out in smoke shops, back when Adam could get away with walking into a smoke shop.

“That’s the Hanged Man, isn’t it?” Adam asks, leaning forward, his hand stroking down Tommy’s back to rest on Tommy’s thigh. It’s warm and heavy sitting there and if it weren’t for the note of something like concern in Adam’s voice, Tommy’d be comforted by its presence.

“Yep,” Robyn replies, and nods at Adam. “It came up in your reading the other day as well, in a different position, but, yeah.”

She turns back to Tommy with a real smile this time. “I know it looks like a kind of harsh card, and for some people, and some decks, it can be, but it’s really about self knowledge. The Hanged Man is one who sacrifices himself for greater knowledge. It’s about being willing to give in order to get, but specifically give of yourself to get wisdom.”

“Kinda like Odin hanging from the World Tree?” Tommy asks and then chuckles and tosses his hands out to the side, smacking Adam lightly on the arm when Adam looks at him in surprise. “What? Death metal isn’t all screaming you know.”

Adam laughs and shakes his head, flopping back in his chair, his arm taking up its station once more across the back of Tommy’s chair.

“Of course. Of course!”

Robyn smiles. “Odin is a perfect example.”

“So how does this relate to the other cards?” Tommy asks. He eases back in his chair and props one knee on the other, forcing himself to relax.

“Well, as the foundation, this might be a lesson that you learned in your past, something you worked hard for and had to put a lot of yourself into one way or another that then helps you deal with whatever situation the Tower represents.”

“Huh. Okay, I think I understand that.”

Robyn smiles. “Like I said, the tarot is an oracle, and the best we can do is interpret the images for you. You’ll know what it looks like after you’ve passed the landmarks.”

Adam chuckles. “It always makes more sense in hindsight.”

 

~~~~

_  
Robyn looks at Tommy and watches the energies ripple from the cards to him and back again. She can see the colors shift and swirl around his hands and can feel that this reading is as real as it gets. He is being given a warning and guidance._

_As she looks, her own hands start to ache. The tips of her fingers seem to be on fire yet at the same time there is a feeling of tremendous joy in her heart._

 

Tommy shoves at the door to the garage with his shoulder, it sticks, as usual, so he shoves harder then has to catch himself when it flies open and hits the wall with a crack. _Shit_ , his mom is gonna be pissed if it left a mark. Again. But he really can’t be bothered to worry about that because on the other side of the garage is his prize.

It’s ugly as fuck. A beat up junker. But it’s his, so it’s beautiful. Not that he’s gonna tell anyone that he thinks in those terms. At twelve he’s already figured out that most guys don’t say shit like that and his sister says it way the fuck too often. So, like, he is never ever telling Lisa a fucking thing. Even if the guitar leaning up against the overflowing shelves is the coolest, most awesome thing he has ever owned in the whole of like, history. Or something.

He dumps his backpack on the ground, careful to miss the patch of oil from where his dad was fixing the car last week and still hasn’t gotten it all up, then he’s kneeling and pulling it to him.

The blisters on the tips of his fingers had broken open last night; well some of them had. He’d gotten sick of them, and desperate to keep playing, so he’d picked at a couple of them till they’d popped. Now the skin, where it he could see it peaking out underneath was raw and pink. After he’d torn off a layer of blistered skin and seen the soft new flesh on the first finger he’d figured out what a mistake that had been. Pressing that one to the strings was gonna suck so bad. Once he’d understood how bad he’d screwed up he’d made himself stop playing with the rest of the blisters. He’d just clenched his hands shut and thought about how much his hands had hurt practicing and how much it would suck to have to start all over again from scratch. When that hadn’t worked he’d actually gone and done his damn homework. Way to ruin a perfectly good evening. And now school was done for the day, his homework and chores, _fucking chores_ , could wait. He had at least an hour till his mom and dad got home from work and his sister wandered in from whichever after school thing she was doing today.

Private Tommy time. Just him and his baby. _Oh shit_. He was so never telling Lisa that!

He reaches for his backpack, dragging his Walkman out and setting it on the floor beside him, then grabs his headphones and slides them into place. Settling the guitar back in his lap he hits play on the Walkman and grins, Metallica’s _Enter Sandman_ blasting into his ears.

“Oh yeah!”

Tommy puts his fingers to the strings, tilts his head and starts to play along, picking out notes as he goes, his finger tips bitching right off the bat, but he doesn’t care. Its music and it’s in his ears and in his hands and it’s the best feeling in the world.

 

Two hours later his hands hurt like hell. The tips are screaming in pain and his fingers ache like shit and all up into the backs of his hands keep cramping. He’s played too long. Again. It just felt so good when he was playing, he kinda forgot to stop. He didn’t even hear Lisa banging into the house or screaming his name. She’d nearly caught him in the garage, but his hands had hurt so much that’d he’d stopped and was gathering up his back pack to go back inside when she stormed in looking for him. She of course accused him of jerking off to dad’s porn mags. Tommy _manfully_ did not correct her assumption.

After that his hands had gotten so bad that he nearly passed on dinner. And just holding his fork made his fingers spaz and cramp up. His Mom had looked at him funny when he dropped his silverware the first time and he really really didn’t want to explain things to her, so he had bitten back a curse, ordered his hands to get it together and work and pushed through the meal.

It was grandma’s reheated meatloaf with mash potatoes so that was okay. Of course Mom and Lisa both harped on him about not eating his green beans. Again. So he’d smothered them in gravy and swallowed as many as he could stand and hid the rest in his napkin.

Now dinner’s done which means dad gets up and disappears into the den and Lisa starts clearing the table. It’s Tommy’s night to do the dishes, so of course he’s dragging his feet. He doesn’t actually mind doing the dishes, he can listen to his Walkman while he works instead of Lisa telling Mom all about her latest score at the mall or whatever amazing thing Bill or Bobby is going to be getting her for her birthday, but it’s the principle of the thing. Lisa never actually gets everything cleared off the table and stacked for him to rinse, and when it’s her night to deal with the dishes she always makes him do more scraping and crap than he ever makes her do. Plus he’s a teenager, or near enough, and he’s just not supposed to want to do chores. All of which means he’s sitting at the table nudging his fork around his plate with the one finger on his right hand that isn’t in excruciating pain.

“Tommy,” his Mom says, standing behind him like she knows what he’s up to, which she probably does because she always seems to know.

“Hmm?”

“Dishes?”

“Yeah, I know.” He sighs the sigh of the long suffering and pushes his chair back, grabs his plate and starts stacking up the rest of the dishes. He winces because that just makes his hands hurt in a whole new way. _Shit_.

“One day,” his Mom says. “I swear. One day. I just one want one day without having to remind everyone in this house about chores and homework and picking up their things.”

Tommy nods, it’s safer that way, and takes his burden into the kitchen.

“You’d think your father at least would be able to work that part out.” Tommy stifles a groan. If she’s starting in about Dad and his shirts on the floor again then they are all in big trouble. Lisa looks over from where she’s scooping leftovers into Tupperware and grimaces. On this at least siblings can agree.

“Dia-“ Dad calls from the front of the house, and Tommy sends a silent prayer to every heavy metal god there is for Dad’s ability to distract Mom. “Where did you put my black jacket?”

Mom tosses her hands in the air with a heavy sigh then heads towards her husband, her hands waving madly. “I didn’t put it anywhere.”

Lisa giggles as she leaves. “Thank God, I thought she was gonna give us the whole speech this time!”

“Me too.” Tommy nods and grins back.

 

Depeche Mode is playing in his ears, his Walkman safe in his back pocket as he shuffles dishes in to the sink. Lisa’s missed spots as usual, so he’s got to scrub some bits off before he loads them in the dishwasher or Mom will have him redoing the whole load before school in the morning. He is so not doing that. He can’t deal with anything before school. He can’t even really deal with school before school, or school at school, so more chores before school? So not happening.

Personal Jesus ends and Tommy’s got the dishwasher open, the sink full of soapy pots and pans. He pushes up his sleeves to start in on the first one when Lisa grabs his wrist. He drops the pot and most definitely does not scream in surprise.

“What the fuck, Lisa?” he says, pushing his headphones off with a dry part of one arm.

“What happened to your hand?”

“Nothing,” he says, trying to tug it away but she’s bigger than he is and has a really strong grip, for a girl.

“Uh huh.” She shakes her head and pokes at the new blisters on the tips of his fingers. The wash water has gotten in to the still forming calluses and blown them up to at least twice the size they were before dinner. Tommy winces. “That’s so not nothing. What have you been doing, TJ?”

Tommy glowers at her. He hates when she calls him TJ and she knows it. “I told you. Like… It’s nothing. Just like, drop it, okay Lisa?”

“Your fingers are total mess _TJ_. Tell me what you’re doing or I am so telling Mom!”

“Don’t!”

“Then tell me.”

Tommy sighs. _Stupid meddling sisters_. He tugs his hand again and this time she lets go. “So, like… I got a guitar.”

“What?”

“A guitar. You know, like an instrument. With strings? You play it?”

“I know what a guitar is, idiot. Where did you get the money for one? And since when have you been interested in anything other than lying around the house?”

“Hey! That’s not fair! I do stuff.”

“Yeah, whatever.” Lisa crosses her arms in front of her chest, just like mom, and glares at Tommy. He glares right back. “Fine,” she says at last. “You do some stuff. Now spill. What’s the deal with the guitar?”

“Remember over the summer when Uncle Ken was here?”

“With Aunt Maggie, yeah, what about it?”

“He and Dad spent a whole bunch of time one night talking about music and all these really old groups like The Doors and Led Zeppelin. And they kept going on about this amazing guitarist named Jimi Hendrix.”

“No they didn’t. Wait when…”

“You weren’t there, okay? You had talked Mom and Aunt Maggie into going to the movies.”

“Oh. Okay.” Lisa shrugs. “So, Dad and Uncle Ken talked about music. So what?”

“Did you know Uncle Ken can play the guitar?” Lisa shakes her head. “He’s like totally awesome. You have to hear him! He got this wicked killer guitar out of his car and started playing.” Tommy’s flailing his arms around in the air trying to show Lisa the wonder that was Uncle Ken’s guitar. “It was like… like… I don’t even know. It was just- so completely radical.”

“So you just went out and bought a guitar because Uncle Kent was playing?”

“Well… yeah. But it was more than that, it was like- “

“Where’d you get the money?”

Tommy rolls his eyes. “I don’t spend all my allowance.”

Lisa glares at him.

“When I earn it,” he amends quickly. “Plus it was cheap. Like twenty bucks. That was… all I had. But it’s not so bad. It came with a spare set of stings and a basic book on how to play.”

Lisa looks at him for a long time. Long enough that Tommy starts to squirm and wonder what she’s going to make him pay her to keep his secret this time. Then she laughs, not her mean _I’m picking on my little brother because I can_ laugh, but her rare, _Tommy’s being cute and I like_ him laugh. “That’s pretty rad, Tommy Joe.”

“So you won’t tell Mom?”

“Um, no. But why not?”

Tommy shrugs. “Dunno. I just… I don’t want anyone to know yet. It’s my thing, you know?” He shrugs again. “For right now. Till I get it, like, right. You know?”

Lisa looks at him and it’s another one of those deep looks like she’s sizing him up and he can suddenly see her being an adult some day with a kid of her own, and that’s just a weird thought. Then she’s tousling his hair, which she knows he also hates, but right now might be okay.

“Okay. I won’t tell Mom. Or Dad. But they are gonna find out if you don’t get rid of those blisters, Tommy.”

“But I need them!” Tommy holds his hands up, palms out to Lisa. His fingers are all pruny and pink and most of the tips have squishy pale bubbles of flesh on them where the calluses have filled up with water and stuff.

Lisa sighs. “Fine. I’ll trade you garbage and living room clean up, for dishes –“

“Both!?”

“Both. For two weeks,” Lisa says, waving two fingers in his face. “So you don’t have to get your hands wet so often. But you better make it worth it, cause if Mom finds out…”

“Yeah, yeah….Thanks.”

“Don’t mention it.” Lisa tugs him into a quick hug and then lets go. She turns away, heading out of the kitchen then stops. “And Tommy.”

Tommy looks up, hands pressed to the cool counter behind him, and tries for his best raised eyebrow question mark face. Lisa laughs.

“Take a bag of peas up to bed with you when you’re done.”

“Huh?”

“Hold on to it while you finish your homework. It’s Mom’s trick for all kinds of swelling. Worked on my ankle the last time I twisted it. It should work pretty well on the pain in your hands.”

“Oh, okay.” Tommy can feel himself blushing and ducks his head; he was hoping she’d missed how much they’d hurt. “Thanks.”

“Sure thing.”

 

Tommy’s got the dishwasher loaded a little while later and turns to wipe down the counter. He stops and curses under his breath. Over by the stove are two, still half-full, serving dishes from dinner and two empty Tupperware containers.

“Lisa!” Tommy grumbles and then laughs. Figures she’d find a way to make him pay, especially when she’d been so nice to him.


	5. Card 4 (Recent past) - Nine of Cups

Card 4 (Recent past) - Nine of Cups

  


  


_In the symbol are nine cups perfectly arranged in a square; all are filled and overflowing with Water. It is the most complete and most beneficent aspect of the force of Water. … [U]nstinted vintage of true nectar of the Gods, brimful and running over, an ordered banquet of delight, True Wisdom self-fulfilled in Perfect Happiness.  
\- Aleister Crowley, The Book of Thoth, The Small Cards_

 

“Okay, now that looks like a cool card,” Tommy says pointing at the card Robyn has just turned over. Its all warm colors and overflowing cups and when he looks closely he can see that the number of cups is balanced in that way she was talking about earlier. “It’s a nine. That’s good, right?”

Robyn smiles and looks over at Adam. “He catches on quick.”

Tommy groans.

“I’m teasing,” she says as she turns back and winks. “You’re just too cute not to.”

“Yeah, yeah. Jeez, what is it with you and your friends thinking I’m cute?” He asks Adam for the millionth time.

“It’s gotta be the ears. And the purring,” he says scratching the back of Tommy’s head. Tommy leans back just a little into Adam’s hand and then smacks Adam on the thigh.

“Shut up. I do not purr.”

“Uh huh.”

Tommy can feel his skin heating up as a blush creeps up his neck. He pulls away from Adam’s hand and tosses his fringe out of his eyes.

“The card?” he asks, looking pointedly at Robyn.

“Right,” Robyn says brightly, picking up the card and holding between them as she speaks. “This is the nine of cups and it is a great card. It’s all about abundance and success. It’s pleasure and happiness and joy in what you have in the moment and really appreciating all of what you have earned.”

“Sounds good to me,” Tommy says. “Where does it fit in the –,” he waves his hand at the cards on the table.

“It’s in your immediate past.” Robyn places the card back into position at the left arm of the cross on the empty end of the layout opposite the line of four cards running up the side of the table. “It represents something or some event that you have recently experienced or been through, in this case something that encompasses all the elements of success and happiness for you.”

Tommy looks up and over at Adam. If he has any say in what these cards mean he knows exactly what this card represents. He grins at Adam and Adam grins back, and Tommy can see that Adam knows exactly what Tommy’s thinking because Adam is thinking the same thing. The recent past has been very good to both of them.

 

~~~~

 

_Watching Tommy and Adam grin at each other, Robyn can feel the energy in the room spike. It’s filled with joy and tastes like the best wine ever made. Given what Robyn knows of Adam’s life in the last year with the tour and recording his second album, and what she has heard him tell her about how Tommy came into his life, she has a pretty good idea of what the men are grinning about._

_The nine of cups is certainly a good representative of the last eighteen months or so of Tommy Joe Ratliff’s life._

 

Tommy’s on his second Mimosa when Adam sinks into the lounge chair next to him with a groan. Tommy turns at the sound and busts up laughing. Adam looks like a hung over raccoon. There are deep circles of glittery blue eyeliner smudged all around his eyes, like he just completely failed at washing his face the night before and then didn’t bother trying again this morning. He’s got his grubby day clothes on, flip flops, board shorts, his oldest, barely legible Queen T-shirt, and his hair tucked away under a beanie. And he’s managed to misplace his sunglasses or leave them in the room all together, so he’s squinting in the morning sun like a vampire on a bad day. Adam Fucking Lambert – Rock God. Tommy snorts. If the fans only knew!

“Shit man,” Tommy says leaning in towards Adam with a smirk. “Didn’t you know you’re supposed to fuck the fan boys, not let them kill you?”

Adam flails a hand in Tommy’s direction and moans which only makes Tommy start laughing all over again.

“I’m surprised you can even walk.”

“Shut the fuck up,” Adam says, but Tommy can tell he’s fighting back a laugh of his own.

“Uh huh.”

“Gimme.” Adam holds out his hand and Tommy hands him his drink. Adam takes two long gulps and hands it back nearly empty. “Oh god help me, I am never drinking again.”

“Yeah, right.”

“No. Seriously. Never.” Adam groans and lies back in the lounger.

“Til tonight. And the next night. You say that with every hang over. Fuck, I said it an hour ago. Life of a fucking rock star man, enjoy it!”

Adam groans again and drapes one freckled arm over his eyes. Tommy takes pity on him and tosses him his sunglasses. They land on Adam’s chest with a thud.

“Bless you.”

“So where’s the boy?”

Adam shrugs then sighs as he gets the sunglasses settled into place.

“Ah.”

“Whatever,” Adam mumbles and Tommy can hear the disappointment and dissatisfaction in his voice.

For all of Adam’s lines about love and sexual expression, he sucks at one night stands. He’s drawn to the allure of them, he says, or some shit like that. Tommy knows that Adam, like the rest of them, just fucking needs to get laid. Maybe more than the rest of them, given how much he gives away during each performance and how much he takes back in. All that energy has to go somewhere. The problem is a new guy in every port just does not work for Adam’s romantic soul. The love part trips him up every time. Either he does it too much, or not enough. Tommy’s betting on the latter given Adam’s state this morning.

“Did you at least have fun?”

“What do you think?” Adam rolls his head on his neck and tries to grin lasciviously at Tommy over the rim of the sunglasses, rhinestone corners winking in the sun. Between the sun and the bullshit, it comes across more as a glare.

“There’s fun, and then there’s fun,” Tommy replies with a shrug, wondering when he and Adam switched places in this kind of conversation.

“What the fuck does that even mean?”

“The body can have fun even when the heart and soul are bleeding.”

Adam rolls his head back and stares up at the sky. “Jesus, Tommy. Who the hell died and let you grow up?”

Tommy chuckles. “All your fault, man. You keep talking all this new age mumbo jumbo at people and it’s gonna wear off eventually.”

“Fuck.”

“Well, yeah.”

“Fuck. Fuck.”

“You did that, I assume.”

Adam covers his face with his hands, but not before Tommy catches sight of the pink creeping across his cheeks. “I hate you.”

Tommy leans over and pats Adam’s knee with a grin. “You love me, admit it.”

“Fuck me, how is this my life?”

“Something about a little competition show called American Idol? Ring any bells?”

“Bitch.”

Tommy shrugs. “Would you be happier if I told you I got laid last night?”

Adam sits up a little, and looks over at Tommy, some of his lethargy vanishing with the idea of gossip. “You did?”

“Nah.”

“You are such a tease.” Adam slaps him. “Why not?”

Tommy stares up at the clouds; they’re resting just on the horizon line, almost like the ocean and the other Hawaiian Islands are holding them up. They are huge and white and thick. Somewhere someone knows what that means, if it’s going to rain soon, or just be cool later in the day. Maybe he’ll ask someone. Later, maybe.

Adam pokes him in the ribs, he’s gotten lost in the clouds. Damn, he’s tired. And hung over. He looks back at Adam and shrugs his shoulders. “Dunno. Mom was here and it just felt weird, you know?”

“Tommy Joe Ratliff,” Adam snorts, “Momma’s boy.”

“Fuck you, Lambert.”

“Maybe later… Like tomorrow, after I’ve slept another twelve hours and taken a really fucking long bath.”

That gets them both laughing and then falling back into their chairs worn out and sighing, but at least Adam’s in a better mood at last.

Tommy waves a hand at the bartender across the pool, who sends them a pretty young thing of a waitress to come take their order for another round of mimosas and a pitcher of water. Tommy adds a fruit plate and some muffins because if he knows Adam, the man hasn’t eaten a damn thing since sometime yesterday evening.

Tommy leaves Adam to his aches and pains while they wait and goes back to enjoying the sounds of the waves breaking on the beach a few feet from their toes mixed with the sound of kids splashing in the pool behind them. It’s kind of the perfect vacation mix. The sun is warm on his skin, where it’s not covered by his t-shirt and shorts because damned if he’s going to deal with people looking at his skinny ass this early in the morning.

He’s seen ads for vacations like this on TV, who the hell hasn’t? He just never thought much about him ever being on one. He’d dreamed of being on tour, sure, but the details had always been a little hazy. Watching “A Year And A Half In The Life Of Metallica” a million times can only fill in so many details about what it’s really like to be a touring musician. Just enough to make a kid dream. But really doing it, really being here, with Adam? With Monte- who is one of the sickest guitar players of this generation or maybe even ever. The man played with fucking Madonna. And Tommy is playing bass with him. With Monte and with Adam. It still makes his head spin some days. And then there’s Cam and Isaac, both of whom have more real world experience in their pinkies than Tommy has in his whole body, and both of whom just opened their arms and their hearts to him like he was fucking family. How does shit like that happen? To him?

And then there’s Sasha and Terrance and Taylor and Brooke and Sutan and shit… just everyone.

It’s a big fucking real live tour with real tour gear because Adam is insane and wanted lasers and got his fucking lasers, which makes Tommy smile every time he thinks about it, because it still makes Adam smile when _he_ thinks about it. And all of it means they have roadies. They have fucking roadies! He nearly flipped his shit the first time he met one of them and realized who and what the guy was. Tommy Joe Ratliff was actually in a band with real live, paid to work for you, roadies. How fucking insane was that?

“So, your mom said she was planning a party for you,” Adam says, pulling Tommy back into the present.

When Tommy looks over, Adam is taking a blueberry muffin from the plate the waitress has placed on the table between them. He looks over the pile of options and snags a banana nut muffin for himself.

“Yeah. She wants to do the family birthday thing when I get home.” Tommy tugs the wrapper off his muffin and tosses it onto the plate. “She said to remind you that you were invited.”

Adam smiles. “Your mom’s so sweet.”

“Yeah.” Tommy grins, his mom rocks. He’s been thinking a lot about his mom and his family lately. His physical family and his new extended family. He doesn’t remember ever having this many people that cared so much about him, that he cared so much about in return. “She likes you, too.”

“What’s going on it that head of yours, Tommy Joe?”

“Hmm?”

“You are thinking way too hard over there for this early in the morning.”

Tommy shakes his head trying to put Adam off, not that that ever works, but it’s habit.

Adam pushes the sunglasses up on to his head. “Come on. What is it?”

He dips his head, picking at his muffin. “It’s nothing – nothing bad. I just.” Tommy looks up, across the courtyard of the hotel. Their amazing hotel on Oahu. He’s in Hawaii for fuck’s sake. With Adam Fucking Lambert and his band. He’s in Adam’s band.

“We’ve been going so hard for so many months now. It’s been amazing, but it was also just like, you get up and do your job, you know?”

Adam nods, watching his face with that intensity that gets Tommy in the gut every time.

“Now? It’s like, there’s this moment to breathe. To think and feel everything.”

“Ah,” Adam whispers. He pulls himself out of his lounger and over to Tommy’s side. “Scoot up a bit,” he says as he fits himself in behind Tommy, his long legs stretching out on either side of Tommy’s, his arms pulling Tommy back against his chest.

Tommy sighs and sinks into Adam’s hold, the buzzing in his stomach slowing to something more tolerable.

“Keep talking,” Adam whispers in his ear.

Tommy takes a breath, filling himself with Adam.

“It’s all so big, you know? Like a year ago I was nobody. Just this guy with dreams of playing in a band that didn’t fall apart at the drop of a fucked up relationship or a scheduling conflict. I wasn’t even a bass player. And now…” Tommy smiles and it feels like his face is going to split in two. “I played _Enter fucking Sandman_ on my birthday.”

Tommy can feel Adam grinning behind him and the strength of Adam’s arms as they squeeze just a little tighter around his chest.

He turns his head to look at Adam. “And _you_ sang like a fucking god.”

Adam snorts at that. “Maybe, but not exactly James Hetfield.”

Tommy looks back out at the ocean and digs Adam in the ribs with his elbow. “It was awesome, shut up.”

“You might be a little biased, Tommy Joe. Just saying. That or blasphemous. I’m not sure which is worse.”

“Hetfield wishes he could sing like you.”

“Blasphemy it is then.” Adam laughs, then goes quiet. “But seriously, I thought you were happy with all of this.” Adam waves a hand around them at the hotel and everything.

“I am. It’s just that it’s all so big and so amazing.”

“And that’s bad because?”

Tommy twists as far around as he can so that he’s looking Adam in the eyes. “It’s not. It’s not bad at all. That’s like… like that’s my whole point. It’s awesome. It’s totally and completely rad. It’s the best of the best.”

“I know that feeling,” Adam says softly and Tommy nods because he knows that Adam knows. They all know that Adam knows.

“And next week I’m going to be back in Burbank with my family, which is good, but weird. And then we are going to Europe. And some days I just… it’s like… wow. This is my life. This is really fucking _really_ my life now.”

“Yeah it is. Is that okay?”

Tommy starts to answer, then stops and thinks for a moment. The answer seems so obvious. Of course its okay, it’s just huge. He looks back at Adam and grins. “It’s perfect.”


	6. Card 5 (Goals and dreams) - The Magician

Card 5 (Goals and dreams) - The Magician

_Mercury is pre-eminently the bearer of the Wand: Energy sent forth. This card therefore represents the Wisdom, the Will, the Word, the Logos by whom the worlds were created… It represents the Will. In brief, he is the Son, the manifestation in act of the idea of the Father. He is the male correlative of the High Priestess. Let there be no confusion here on account of the fundamental doctrine of the Sun and Moon as the Second Harmonics to the Lingam and the Yoni…the creative Mercury is of the nature of the Sun. But Mercury is the Path leading from Kether to Binah, the Understanding; and thus He is the messenger of the gods, represents precisely that Lingam, the Word of creation whose speech is silence.  
\- Aleister Crowley, The Book of Thoth, The Juggler/Magician_

 

Tommy watches Robyn as she flips over the top card of the cross. She goes still for a moment and then relaxes a little. It makes him wonder what she had been expecting.

“The next card,” she says, pointing to the card at the top of the reading. It has a gold figure in the center surrounded by weird symbols and rays. “Here at the top, represents your goals and dreams in relation to the question and the issue represented by the first card drawn – the Tower.”

Tommy nods, he’s starting to get the hang of this tarot stuff, sort of.

“This card is the Magician. Crowley had his artist, Lady Frieda Harris, create three images for the Magician based on three different mythological view points. This one,” Robyn points to the card she just turned over, “is connected to the Greek god Hermes, known to the Romans, and flower delivery people everywhere as Mercury, the guy with the winged boots.”

Tommy and Adam both chuckle.

Robyn shrugs. “Eh, you go with what you got, right?”

“I so wanted those boots when I was a kid,” Adam laughs as he stretches one leg out and twirls his foot, the rhinestones on his boot winking in the candle light.

“Oh, there’s a surprise.” Tommy rolls his eyes at Adam.

“Hey, they were cool!”

“And shiny,” Tommy teases, wiggling his fingers in Adam’s face like crazed fairy wings.

“Now boys…”

Adam and Tommy look at Robyn and reply together. “Yes, Mom.”

Robyn shakes her head and turns back to her cards. “Hermes is a trickster god but more importantly in this case he is also a god of wisdom.

“The Magician, no matter which version of the card you pull, is about integrated knowledge, about being the Magus, or Master, who has met all the levels of training and completed all the tests. He is at the top of his craft. He has become one with the wisdom of the elements and the suits of the deck and can command them at will. They are the tools of his craft.”

“Wow,” Tommy says, kind of impressed despite himself. “That’s pretty cool actually.”

Robyn grins. “And you thought the tarot was just a bunch of playing cards.”

“Well…”

“Its okay, it’s that too,” she says with a wink. “Anyway… The Magician being here in the position of your goals and dreams could be one of three things.”

“Three again,” Tommy remarks with a raised eyebrow.

“Yep.” Robyn nods and starts to list the choices off on her fingers. “In this case the card might represent who or what you dream of becoming – a person who is the best in their field, who has full use of all the skills of their trade to create magic. It might be a message telling you that you will need to be like the Magician so that you will have all the tools and skills you need when the time comes to use them. Or it might be that you will need the help of the Magician in order to achieve your goal.”

Robyn pauses, looks at the cards and then looks at Tommy. “Of course, with the tarot it could also mean all three.”

Tommy groans. “Of course.”

 

~~~~  
 _  
The cards hum under Robyn’s fingers, each one jostling for attention. There is so much information in this reading. So much that the universe, the gods, whoever, want to tell her – to make sure that she passes on to Tommy and Adam. It’s hard to know which messages she is supposed to relay and in which order._

_She looks down at the cards again. The Magician with his three paths grins at her, juggling information and tools in equal measure._

 

“I know babe, just…” Adam pauses on the phone as Tommy talks over him, complaining about the physical therapist and his sister and everything at the recovery facility the doctors recently moved him into. Tommy is in pain night and day, inside and out and there’s nothing Adam, or anyone else for that matter, can do for him except stand by him while he learns how to cope.

The problem is Tommy doesn’t want to cope. He’s stuck and it’s breaking Adam’s heart.

The bus lurches as it takes a turn on the freeway and Adam grips the counter in the galley tighter. His bare feet slip a little on the faux-wood flooring, his sleep pants catching under one heel. He bends his knees to adjust his balance, so used to the motion of the bus by now that he doesn’t even thing about it, the move is automatic. He straightens up as the bus levels out.

The cell signal cuts out for a second and he has one awful moment to think _thank god,_ and then Tommy is back, and Adam is kicking himself for being a heartless ass.

“-ust don’t see the point,” Tommy says across the miles.

“I know. But please, just keep trying. Think of it this way,” Adam says, digging for anything that might bring out the old Tommy, “at least if you do your PT, you’ll be able to wipe your own ass.”

“Yeah. Great.”

Adam stifles a sigh, running his free hand through his hair. It comes away flecked with glitter. Bus showers just can’t cope with industrial hairspray.

The bus lurches again and he falls forward but manages to avoid hitting his face on the cabinets by grabbing hold of Terrance as he comes down the hall. He mimes _thank you_ and stands up. Terrance nods and mimes back _Tommy?_ Adam nods and Terrance holds his hand out for the phone. Adam closes his eyes and hands it over. He can’t actually say he’s sorry to be done with the call for the day.

“Hey, Boo, how’s it hangin?” Terrance says, his voice high and cheerful as though nothing has changed, then he’s heading back the way he came and away from Adam.

Adam sighs, he wants to talk to Tommy, he really does, but the person on the other end of the phone is hardly recognizable and it hurts. Adam sighs again and picks up the water bottle that he’d gone to the galley to get before his cell phone had rung, and walks to the table in the living area where he left Monte. Monte looks up from his laptop as Adam flops down on the couch beside him.

“How’s he doing?”

Adam shrugs and stares out the window watching the middle of America zoom by at seventy miles an hour. He wants to help Tommy in the worst way. He’s his friend, his employee, his… something. They have this friendship that defies logic. Or they did before the accident. Now they’re like two strangers ripping at each other every time they talk.

“That good?”

“It’s been worse. At least he wasn’t yelling at me this time.” Adam toys with the lid of his water bottle, then tilts his head around to look up at Monte. “What the hell do I do? I thought things were better after I went back to visit. And they were for a little while, but now… it’s like I can’t do anything right.”

“He’s in pain and he’s angry.”

“I know.”

Adam drops his head to his hands, the tears pushing at his eyes and clogging his throat. He feels like he’s ten again and Neil’s gone and fallen off his bike, only this time it will take more than a kiss on the knee and a hug to fix what’s wrong.

“I hear all of it. Every bitch and moan, everything the doctors have done wrong this week, everything he’s not saying about how much it all sucks. I can feel how much he hurts. How much he still...”

“He doesn’t blame you,” Monte says. “Not really. He’s just mad at the world.”

Adam nods.

“Is he doing his PT?”

Adam shrugs. There’s a hole in his sleep pants that’s just begging to be picked at so he pokes one shiny blue nail into the hole. It’s a lousy distraction for a horrible discussion.

“He says he is, though he doesn’t see the point. Dia told me the other day that the therapist is having trouble getting his cooperation, says he’s difficult and sullen in session and clearly not doing his homework. Dia said it’s like having a teenager all over again.”

“She must love that.” Monte snorts, his voice dripping with sarcasm.

“Yeah.”

“He taught himself how to play, he can figure this out.”

“What if he can’t?” Adam looks up at Monte, and he doesn’t care if he looks a mess or if he’s wearing his heart on his sleeve, this is Monte and this is Tommy they are talking about.

“Maybe…” Monte says, fingers tapping on the table, and then stops.

“What?”

Monte gazes out the window and Adam knows that look, he’s seen it many times in late night jam sessions. It’s his mind making odd connections that turn out to be brilliant music. “Maybe he just needs the right incentive.”

“What’d you mean?”

“I’ve been doin’ some research and there’s this program outta Johns Hopkins that’s using a modified version of Guitar Hero to test prosthetic prototypes.”

“Okay. That is pretty fucking cool.”

“Exactly. So what if we could get Tommy, who’s already a bass player and not just another amputee – but someone who understands both the mechanics of the game and the muscle control needed to play the real thing, into the program as one of their testers?”

“Could we do that?”

Monte grins and opens his hands wide like a barker in front of a sideshow, its kind of scary.

“Dude, you’re Adam Fucking Lambert. What are they going to do? Say no? They’d get a ton of publicity just for agreeing to have Tommy in the program.”

Adam has to laugh at that, Monte almost never adds the “fucking” to his name.

“Okay.” Adam nods, his mind already racing ahead at the possibilities. “Okay, that could be pretty awesome actually.”

Monte nods and keeps going, in full sales mode now. “I also know this guy who was born without his right hand. John Denner?”

“The name sounds familiar…”

“One of the best rock guitarists out there.”

Adam’s eyebrows shoot up. “A one handed guitar player?”

“You heard me. One handed and as bad ass a player as they come. I’m thinking, we could talk with him, maybe see if he would be willing to meet with Tommy. Try talking some sense into him.”

“Yeah. That sounds amazing, if he’d agree.”

“I think he might. John’s that kinda guy. And he’d be good for Tommy. You just can’t hold on to a pity party around him.”

Adam nods his head. “That would be amazing if we can make it work.”

 

***

 

It’s not until the busses are rolling across the boarder into New York State that Monte and Lane are able to nail down all the details involved with setting up the meeting. Between Adam’s schedule of interviews and promo shoots and Denner’s performing and teaching commitments it was starting to look like they were going to have to fly Adam back to New York, or maybe down to D.C. just to pull of a two hour appointment. But Lane, as they all know, is a miracle worker, and Monte is nothing short of pit-bull tenacious, so of course the whole thing works out.

Now, squeezed between said press and performances, Adam and Monte are in Adam’s suite waiting for Denner to arrive. Adam is fidgeting and twisting his rings around on his fingers and playing with his hair and trying not to pass out.

“Would you sit still already?!” Monte growls. He’s sitting in one of the over-stuffed chairs, looking for all the world like he is as relaxed as can be, one leg crossed on his knee, scuffed boot bouncing to some rhythm in his head.

Most people looking at Monte would swear he was calm, but Adam knows better. His fingers give him away. Usually it’s just the foot or the fingers, not both. He only does both when he’s nervous or drunk or right after a really good show and he’s high on the energy.

“Sorry,” Adam mumbles.

“No, I’m sorry,” Monte says, his fingers stilling on the arm of the chair. “Wow. I don’t know what we’re so nervous about.”

Adam chuckles. “Right?”

The door to the suite opens and Lane steps in with a smile. “Adam, Monte.” She nods and then steps aside to allow a tall, slender man entrance to the room. “This is John Denner.”

Denner’s long oval face is lit up with a generous smile that Adam likes immediately. He’s going a bit bald at the temples but it gives him a hint of maturity to balance the twinkle in his eyes. His shoulders are broad, like most of the guitarists Adam knows, and if he hadn’t seen the videos Adam would never even look for the stump of Denner’s right arm – which is covered in a skin tight sleeve with a blue and black flame design running up its length.

Denner steps further into the room as Adam and Monte stand up. He puts his guitar case down beside the couch, and offers his hand to Adam. “Hi, John Denner.”

“Adam Lambert, thank you so much for agreeing to meet with us.”

“My pleasure.”

John holds his hand out to Monte and they clasp arms like old friends. “Hey, Monte. Good to see you.”

“You too, man. How you been?” Monte asks, waving John to a seat on the couch.

“Good. Real good.”

As everyone settles in, Adam lets himself look John over. He’s dressed casually in standard rock garb with a twist of the teacher – jeans, a Les Paul t-shirt partially covered by an unbuttoned light blue oxford, and of all things, canvas boat shoes. The shoes make Adam smile and he can feel something uncoil in his stomach. Tommy will mock all of them for introducing him to a guitarist who wears boat shoes, but he will also laugh his ass off, eventually

Adam decides he likes the look and feel of the man. Not like he wouldn’t, Monte has good taste in people, but its one thing to know about a person at a distance and another to meet them face to face.

John looks over at Adam. “I heard about your bassist, Tommy?”

“Yeah.”

“I’m sorry.”

Adam dips his head, fighting back the ever-present wave of sorrow. “Thank you.”

“Monte mentioned that he was having some trouble adjusting and you thought I might be able to help.”

“Well, we’re hoping so. If you would be willing? Adam replies, curling his fingers over his knees to try and tame the nerves and the worry that have flared up all over again. “He’s just… so broken. Doesn’t see a reason to do his PT or even try. He’s mad at the world and…”

“Yep,” John says, with a nod. “I might have been born without my hand, but I’ve worked with enough folks who had a good hand and then lost it that I know what that looks like. And I’ve had my days of being angry and frustrated. It’s not easy living in a world that is built for two arms and two legs and suddenly having less. It can make a man wonder how he fits in, or even if he still does.”

Adam nods. “Yeah. I just keep thinking I should know how to help him, you know?”

“You are. You are helping him right now. Each moment you listen to him and let him be angry you help him. And this,” John waves his stump between the three of them. “This meeting, looking for ways to give him hope, that’s helping him.”

Adam nods again and chokes back a sob.

Denner leans forward and looks Adam in the eyes. “But you also gotta let him crawl back out of the pit he’s got himself in. And the only way he can do that, is on his own.”

“What do you mean?” Monte asks.

Denner looks over at Monte and shrugs. He doesn’t raise his voice or do anything specific but still Adam can tell that while he’s answering Monte’s question, the word are meant for Adam in particular.

“Grief is a funny thing. It can eat a person alive or it can take you to some place amazing. Thing is, where you go, and when you get there is pretty much up to the person grieving.

“Tommy’s in grief right now, as much as in physical pain, and he needs to be there. He needs to feel the loss of his hand and everything he once had.”

“Everything I gave him,” Adam whispers.

“No,” John and Monte say at the same time. John bows his head to Monte and Monte picks up the thread.

“You and I hired him for the band, but Tommy earned his place. We – you – didn’t give him anything he didn’t earn.”

Adam takes a deep breath and nods. He knows Monte’s right. He’s only told him this same thing about Tommy and about the accident about a thousand times since that night, maybe it’s time Adam learned to believe him.

“I listened to the tracks Monte sent me,” John says after a moment. “The ones of just him playing for your new album. The kid’s good. Has a good ear. His fingering is good. That song you credited to him isn’t bad either. Little dark but…”

John shrugs and Adam has to grin. Tommy was actually in a really good mood the day they wrote “Lay Me Down” even though the words and the tune are as close to an homage to Manson as Adam is ever likely to get.

“You said he’s self taught?”

Monte and Adam both nod.

“All the better.”

“Why?” Adam asks.

“If he can teach himself once, then he has the skills and the tenacity to do it again.”

Adam feels a flutter of hope in his chest. “And that’s good?”

John nods. “That’s real good.”

Adam looks at Monte and nods. Monte looks over at John. “So? What do you think? Will you help us? Help Tommy?”

John dips his head and for a moment Adam is reminded of Kris Allen and all his sweet southern earnestness.

“I’d need to meet him, see what he wants. See if this is something _he_ wants to do. But if it is then yes, I’m in.”

Adam can’t help it, he laughs out a sigh of relief and it feels like he is breathing for the first time in a very long time.

“Thank you, thank you so much.”


	7. Card Six (Immediate Future) - The Three of Swords

Card Six (Immediate Future) - The Three of Swords

 

_This card is dark and heavy; it is, so to speak, the womb of Chaos. There is an intense lurking passion to create, but its children are monsters. This may mean the supreme transcendence of the natural order. Secrecy is here, and Perversion._

_The symbol represents the great Sword of the Magician, point uppermost; it cuts the junction of two short curved swords. The impact has destroyed the rose. In the background, storm broods under implacable night.  
\- Aleister Crowley, The Book of Thoth, The Small Cards_

 

Tommy looks away from Adam’s smile to the cards on the table and frowns. Robyn has already turned over the next card. It’s dark and gloomy looking, but it’s another three, so that can’t be all bad.

 

“The next card,” Robyn says in a rush, “sits in the place of your immediate future. This could be anything from days or weeks from now. Probably not much more than a few months, though time is a hard thing to predict with divination.”

“What is it?” Tommy strokes the edge of the card with one finger. “It looks kinda like a storm or something.”

Robyn nods, her hands clasped tightly together at the edge of the table. “Storm is a good description for it. This is the Three of Swords.”

Adam sucks in a breath and Tommy whips his head around to look at him. His eyes are large and his face is pale.

“What?”

“Nothing,” Adam says, pulling his hands in and around his chest, as though he’s cold or something. “Nothing.”

“Bullshit.”

“The Three of Swords,” Robyn says, cutting through their staring contest, “is a tough card by most people’s standards.”

Tommy’s not looking at her, he’s looking at the worry in Adam’s eyes.

“Tell me,” he says to Adam.

Adam nods toward the cards on the table. “It showed up in my reading the other day as well.”

“In the same position?”

Adam shakes his head. “It was the second card, the one where you got the Ten of Swords – the immediate challenge.”

“So? What does that mean? I mean… like is it a big deal that we both have the same card-”

“Two cards,” Adam interjects. “We both got the Hanged Man.”

“So, two cards.” Tommy turns to Robyn. “Does that mean something?”

She shakes her head. “Not necessarily, no. You’re good friends and your lives are pretty intertwined though so it’s possible that there is some bleed through going on, or it might be that whatever the cards think is going to happen will affect you both. Just in different ways.”

“And this card,” Tommy looks down at the table, “the… the Three of Swords? How does that affect things?”

Robyn takes a breath. “Like I said it’s a difficult card. Crowley labeled it ‘sorrow’. It’s about all the things that are wrapped up with sorrow – grief and pain, anger and despair.”

“And it’s in my future?”

Robyn nods.

Tommy sinks back into his chair and runs a hand through his hair. He bites his lower lip and stares at the cards on the table trying to decide if he believes in any of this stuff.

 

~~~~

 

_Robyn bows her head. There is so much she wants to tell Tommy but can’t. Telling him what she is seeing won’t do him any good and might make things worse. She’s found that out the hard way in the past. But it’s hard to sit in this tiny room with him and Adam and watch Tommy struggle to comprehend what the cards are showing him._

_She raises her eyes to the cards and makes herself look at the three of swords. It vibrates with pain and grief. She can feel how it is linked to all the other cards in the reading, how it must be there and what it represents on Tommy’s journey._

 

“Go away!” Tommy shouts. It’s the first thing he’s said to his Mom in three days, and now he can’t stop. “Go away! Go away! Go the fuck away! Just leave me the fuck alone!”

He’s screaming at the top of his lungs, his bandaged hand and stump moving back and forth over his ears, in front of his face, tangling in his hair, trying to block out the world.

He’s backed himself into one corner of his room in the rehabilitation center between his bed and the window trying to get away from everyone who wants something from him. He can’t deal with the questions and the pressure and the constant push to get better and feel better and try to just be a little bit more like he used to be. He’s nothing like he used to be and he never will be again. Why can’t any of them see that? They just push and push and he can’t take it any more.

He clenches his eyes shut. He doesn’t want to see the pity and hurt on his Mom’s face or the pain in his sister’s eyes. He knows, somewhere inside that he shouldn’t be yelling at them. They didn’t do this to him. They didn’t cause the pain he’s in. They are only trying to help him, but he can’t stand the way they look at him.

He can’t stand the way _he_ looks. He made the nurses cover the mirror in the bathroom with fabric so he didn’t have to see himself, see what he’s become. He can’t look. Can’t see. Can’t stand himself. Can’t stand what he has become.

“Tommy…” someone says, and he no longer knows who’s in the room with him, there’s too much noise in his head.

“Shut UP!”

“Enough. Tommy.”

There are hands on his biceps, just above where the nerves scream at him day in and day out giving him fucked up messages about what hurts and what doesn’t, what’s still there and what isn’t. He opens his eyes and sees the lead day nurse, Patrick looking back at him. The dancing bears on his black uniform scrubs mocking him in their happiness.

“They’re gone.”

Tommy freezes for a moment, the rage still blazing in his veins and then collapses, Patrick’s massive arms the only things keeping him from hitting the floor.

“You gotta stop, man,” Patrick says, tugging him to his knees and pressing him back against the wall. Instead of walking away, Patrick folds himself in half and sinks to the floor to join Tommy. “I know you’re angry, and you have every right to be, but taking it out on your Mom? Not cool, man.”

Tommy nods.

“And you know your sister’s pregnant. She and that kid do not need your crap either.”

Tommy glares at Patrick. “Are you trying to make me feel better or worse here?”

“Just pointing out reality.”

Tommy bangs his head against the wall. It feels good, a different kind of pain than what he’s used to.

“A concussion is only going keep you here longer.”

Tommy rolls his eyes but stops short of banging his head again. “I’m just…”

There’s too much in Tommy’s head. Too many words he wants to scream. It’s like that fucking song of Adam’s except in reverse. All Tommy’s doing is hiding. He’s screaming on the inside and hiding away from everything and everyone because it all just hurts too much.

Tommy looks over at Patrick. The nurse is watching him with his calm brown eyes in his calm brown face. No questions, no expectations. He reminds Tommy of Longineu. He’s shorter than Longineu though, closer to Tommy in height, and bald as an eight ball. More, it’s the quiet way he looks at Tommy, at all of the patients at the facility really, like he’ll wait all day if they need him to. Longineu used to do that on tour. They’d be hanging out and Tommy’d find himself talking just because Longineu would listen so well. Like Adam, only different.

His therapist, the head shrink as opposed to the arm stretcher, as Tommy has taken to calling them, keeps trying to get him to talk about his anger, about his feelings. But there’s something about the guy’s space that just feels wrong to Tommy. It’s too much like what his dad would have wanted his den to look like if they’d had the money to decorate it properly when Tommy was growing up. It’s all leather upholstery and perfect bookshelves. There’s no music anywhere, which tells you something about the guy right there. Tommy may still have trouble listening to music, but he can’t trust a guy who doesn’t have music anywhere in his office.

But Patrick is cool. He and Patrick have talked Depeche Mode and Muse and even a little bit about Manson, though Patrick seems to be a lost cause on that front. Tommy has even heard him singing to himself out at the nurse’s station during the night sometimes. So maybe, just maybe…

“I’m just so fucking angry all the time, you know?” He looks over at Patrick and sees him nod. “It’s like, like there’s this furnace of rage in me. It’s vicious and cruel and, like, wants to cut and tear through my skin and, like, rip apart anything it touches.

“Sometimes, when I am lying in bed, it feels like there’s this thing, like, pushing at my skin, pressing up, demanding to come out and I feel like my arms should be moving, my legs should be kicking, but I’m not moving. I can’t move. I feel locked in ice and like, like someone has taken a knife to my skin and I should be bleeding everywhere, but I’m not. There should be blood everywhere…”

Tommy stares at his arms, but they’re clean.

“It’s inside me. It’s everywhere. Rage just buzzing everywhere I look. And there’s so much of it. I don’t know to breathe.” He’s crying now, tears he’d thought he was done with, streaming down his face. “There’s no where to go. Nothing to do. Nothing to do with all this anger. I don’t want it. I don’t want to feel it, but it won’t go away. It won’t leave me alone. All I can do is scream and scream and scream. But I can’t scream because-“  
Tommy stops, his words stumbling to a halt.

“Because why?” Patrick asks quietly.

Tommy turns to look at him. There’s no judgment in his eyes, no pity or anger, just the same calm, open willingness to listen that they started with. He hasn’t even moved. He’s like a statue of calm. It almost breaks Tommy.

He holds his arms up and shakes them at Patrick, the anger flaring along his veins.

“Yeah? I know about the cast and the stump. What’s that got to do with your voice, with you not screaming?”

“Because…” Tommy’s voice cracks and he has to start over. “Because… damn it!

“Because I can’t fucking hold a guitar any more! I can’t play! I can’t pick up my bass and let it scream notes until my ears bleed and nothing hurts any more. Words don’t work. They are like nothing compared to this thing inside me… because it’s trapped. I’m trapped. The only thing I have ever had. The only thing that was truly me-” Tommy waves his arms again- “was music and I can’t fucking let it out now.

“Inside… inside everything is moving. Shredding and vibrating… like it’s… like it’s gonna rattle me apart.” Tommy grinds his teeth, the rage pushing at the edges of his whole being. He bites off each word. “I. Want. To. Scream. To cut. To bite. To hurt. Something. Anything. Just to make it stop.”

He pushes his bangs away from his face, scrubs at his eyes with his stump and winces in pain.

“I want my life back. I want my career back. I want my hand back! I just want. So. Much.”

Patrick puts a hand on Tommy’s knee. “You can’t have your life back any more than you can have your hand back.”

Tommy takes in a shuddering breath and nods, dropping his stump into his lap.

“But you can have a future. If you let yourself.”

Tommy sniffs and stares at the bandages around his stump and the network of pins running along the cast on his other arm.

“How do I do that?”

“Accept that your hand is gone. You don’t have to like it. You can be – you should be angry about it because it’s fucked up, but its not coming back and all the shouting and cutting people off isn’t gonna change that.”

Tommy nods his head.

There’s silence then, or what passes for silence in a building full of injured and sick people struggling to get well. Patrick stays quiet beside Tommy, not pressing any farther, just waiting once more. Tommy appreciates that.

After a long while Tommy looks up through his overly long bangs at Patrick. He starts to say what’s pressing at his throat, but it’s hard. “I’m…” He bites his lower lip and tries again. “I’m scared,” he whispers.

Patrick nods and squeezes his knee.

The world doesn’t explode in flames and Tommy doesn’t miraculously stop hurting or wanting to run away, but it’s a start. He guesses that’s gotta be worth something.


	8. Card 7 (Factors or inner feelings affecting the situation) - Ten of Wands

Card 7 (Factors or inner feelings affecting the situation) - Ten of Wands

  


_The number Ten refers to Malkuth, which depends from the other nine Sephiroth, but is not directly in communication with them. It shows the Force detached from its spiritual sources. It is become a blind Force; so, the most violent form of that particular energy, without any modifying influences. The flames in the back ground of the card have run wild. It is Fire in its most destructive aspect.  
\- Aleister Crowley, The Book of Thoth, The Small Cards_

 

“The next card represents factors or emotions that affect the situation at hand,” Robyn says, turning over the first card in the row of cards running up along the side of the cross.”

“So how I feel about what’s going on?” Tommy asks, leaning forward, one arm resting on his knee.

“Not quite,” Robyn says, her fingers fiddling with the pile of unused cards on the table. She takes a breath and looks up at Tommy. “This is more about what emotions might be having a direct impact on the situation. You could be happy about some part of the situation and still not happy about the situation in general. The fact that you are happy would have an impact on how things work out. Does that make sense?”

“Um. Yeah, I think so.” Tommy nods and leans in a little closer. “So what’s this card?”

“This is the Ten of Wands. It’s about force out of control, disconnected from spirit. It’s about blockages and, as it says, oppression. Using more power, more fire or force than necessary because your judgment is clouded.”

Tommy turns to Adam with a wry grin. “You know, you said this would be fun. I’m beginning to wonder about your definition of that word.”

Adam shrugs. He’s slouched in his chair but there’s a tension in his body that speaks volumes to Tommy about how not normal this reading has turned out to be. Tommy’s own tension is bubbling out through a rhythm bouncing along his leg.

“Don’t look at me. I tend to get amazing, happy card readings.”

Tommy snorts. Of course Adam does, that’s just so him. “Yeah, well. That’s probably just Brad spreading his ‘sparkle’ all over everything again. Damn stuff is catching!”

Adam laughs and throws a mock slap in Tommy’s direction.

Tommy bats at Adam with kitty paws. “Hey, you promised me orgasmic man!”

“I did not.”

“I’m certain you did. Well someone did.”

Tommy looks at Adam and they both pause for the length of a breath before saying “Brad!”

 

~~~~

 

_Under Tommy’s joking words, Robyn can feel his worry. The cards in this reading are bitterly dark. In any other situation she would probably have suggested they try again another day, but something about this reading, about the energy around it, and how vivid the images accompanying it have become, are demanding that she see it through to the end._

_Looking at the ten of wands feels like looking at a wall of fire. There is noise just beyond the edge of Robyn’s hearing, and a tension just under her skin that makes her want to scratch until she is bleeding. The more she looks, the more intense the sensations get until she feels like she is going to explode if something doesn’t shift soon and then it’s gone. She can breathe again._

 

Adam stops in the doorway of the rehab center and stares, memories colliding with memories as he watches Tommy work through – something – with his left hand. His right arm has an attachment, a prosthetic, Adam assumes, with a metal thing at the end that looks, frankly, a little vicious. Tommy’s face is lined with strain and sweat. His hair is its natural dark brown and Mohawk-less, pulled back in a pony tail that is hanging absurdly long down his back. It has to be the strangest look Adam has ever seen on Tommy, and yet, it’s stunning.

And it hurts. So damn much.

Two years ago, to the day, Adam had been standing on a stage in Auckland, New Zealand singing ‘Enter Sandman’ to a sold out crowd for Tommy’s birthday. It had been amazing and spectacular.

Two nights ago he’d played the last leg of his second Pan-Asian tour in Hawaii. Without Tommy and it had felt like ripping a bandage off an open wound.

He’d meant to stay on Oahu for a couple of days before coming home to LA to prep for the Halloween party and see his folks, but he just couldn’t. He’d found himself looking over his shoulder for Tommy everywhere he went in Hawaii. It hadn’t helped that they’d stayed at the same hotel they been at last time and played on the same stages. He kept remembering the things they had done together and with the others as part of Tommy’s extended birthday celebration and to celebrate their two week vacation.

The second tour had been going amazingly well so far. They’d all settled into a groove that worked, even the fans had gotten to love Matt with his tall dark and handsome ways and smooth bass playing. But as they got closer to Tommy’s birthday the Meet & Greets with the fans had gotten crazy. It seemed like every person was suddenly asking him how Tommy was doing and handing him cards and gifts to pass on. It was amazing and heartbreaking. They loved him so much and Adam had to lie and tell them he was doing good, getting better every day, and would be back with them soon. But in reality? Adam hadn’t heard from Tommy in over six weeks. He only had Dia and Lisa’s emails to go off of, and those had gone from short to terse to nearly non-existent. Adam had no clue how things were going, but the last time he talked to Tommy, Tommy had told him to leave him the fuck alone and never call him again. It had nearly killed Adam to do it, but Monte and Terrance, and even Cam of all people, had insisted that Adam back off and give Tommy some time. So he had. He’d thrown himself into the tour and the fans and it had been good.

But now he’s home. Now he needs to know.

Watching Tommy working his way through whatever thing he’s trying to do with his hand – opening and closing the fingers of his left hand around some red thing – makes Adam’s own hand ache in sympathy. He wants to get closer, find out what in fact Tommy’s doing and why, but he can’t make his feet move.

A woman steps up beside him, her light brown ponytail bouncing as she moves. She smiles at Adam and holds out her hand. “Mr. Lambert?”

Adam takes her hand and nods. “Adam, please.”

The woman nods. “I’m Marissa Sinclair, Assistant Manager for the facility.”

Adam nods in return and makes himself keep his eyes on Marissa with her cheerful green eyes that match her uniform track suit, when all he really wants is to go back to watching Tommy.

“You’re here to see Tommy, I assume?”

“Yeah. That’s okay, isn’t it? His mother said-“

Marissa smiles and holds up a hand. “That’s fine. He’s welcome to have visitors and I know he wants to see you.”

“I don’t know about that…”

“Ah. Got mad at you the last time you talked?”

Adam nods, surprised.

Marissa smiles again and it’s warmer now, filled with something a lot like compassion.

“That happens a lot. There’s a lot of anger around limb loss and discovering you are now differently-abled. Especially when it’s sudden like his was. Traumatic injury is hard enough to deal with mentally and physically. Add in the shock of no longer having a part of yourself?” Marissa shrugs, and the movement shifts her stance enough for Adam to see that she too is wearing a prosthesis on one arm, it looks a lot more life like that Tommy’s. “The process is different for everyone, but the anger is always there somewhere.”

“How’s he doing?” Adam asks, shoving his hands in his pockets to keep from reaching out and shaking Marissa for being so chipper or wrapping Tommy in a hug.

Marissa turns to watch Tommy and Adam follows. “Much better. He’s been making real progress over the last month or so. I assume you know he was very resistant to the prosthesis at first?”

Adam nods. The pain in Tommy’s voice when he’d called after his first fitting had been horrible, but the rapid-fire mood swings had been worse. Tommy had gone from despondent and sobbing to howling mad in a flash and Adam had no idea what to do to help him.

“It was difficult to get him to agree to the protocols involved in preparing his limb for the prosthesis, so there were complications that delayed getting him started with his training. The final surgery to his other hand also slowed the overall recovery plan for both arms, but he’s on track and doing very well now.”

The man working with Tommy says something to him and Tommy unclenches his left hand with an audible sigh. The man grins and it lights up his dusky face. Tommy says something and the guy laughs taking the red thing out of Tommy’s grip- Adam can see it’s a ball- and tossing it in the air before putting it on the table next to them. Tommy says something else and the man appears to think about it, as though it’s a difficult request then grins and reaches down out of Adam’s view and comes back up with a large book.

“That’s Ahmed,” Marissa says as they watch Tommy and the man bend to look over pages in the book. “He’s Tommy’s physical therapist.”

Adam nods, fascinated by the animated way Tommy is pointing at something on the page. His face looks bright and alive. He’s even smiling. Beside Adam, Marissa chuckles.

“What?” Adam asks.

“Ahmed is in a band, a bassist.”

“Oh.”

“Yeah. I’m betting that’s not one of our standard PT books they just pulled out.”

Adam smiles and it feels good to be able to do that in this place under these conditions. “No, probably not.”

“Oops. We’ve been spotted.” Marissa nods her head back toward Tommy and Ahmed. Tommy is looking over at Adam now, a soft smile on his face. “Come on. Time to face the music, as it were.”

Ahmed stands and offers his hand as Adam and Marissa approach.

“Hi,” Ahmed says. “Nice to meet you. Tommy’s told me a lot about you.”

“Has he?”

“All good!” Ahem puts his hands up in mock surrender.

“You made it.” Tommy says quietly, almost like he’s shy.

Adam turns on the charm, covering his confusion, and spreads his arms out wide. Tommy was never shy with him, not even at his audition. “Like I would miss your birthday!”

Tommy dips his head, a stray lock of hair falling across his face. “Well… with your schedule…”

Adam doesn’t even think about it, he puts a finger under Tommy’s chin and lifts his face so he can look Tommy in the eyes. “I made them set the schedule so I could be here. Power of being me, right?”

“Rock star power!”

“You know it.”

“So, Tommy, you ready to show Adam what you’ve been up to?” Ahmed asks, though Adam can tell it’s a bit more like a strongly worded instruction than a question.

“Sure. Just, stand there, okay?” Tommy says to Adam and then adjusts his chair so that he is now facing Adam and Marissa. Tommy sits down and uses his left hand to arrange a set of objects on the table in between them. There’s a banana, and the remnants of another one off to the side, a cell phone, a glass with water in it, and a bowl with several eggs in it.

Marissa leans in and whispers to Adam. “This is a set of dexterity exercises that we have amputees work through to learn how to control their prosthesis. The different sizes and weights help the person learn how much force is needed to open and close the claw in order to pick up, move, and put down an item. Practicing with eggs teaches finesse and subtlety.”

Tommy snorts. “Never one of my strong points, I know, but-“ Tommy uses his right arm with its metal claw to reach into the bowl and pick up one of the eggs. Adam finds himself watching Tommy’s face almost as much as his arm. He watches the concentration there as Tommy focuses on maneuvering the egg into the air, across the table to stop in front of Adam.

“For you,” Tommy says, with a huge smile.

Adam grins back and plucks the egg out from between Tommy’s metal grip. “Thanks, I think.”

 

***

 

Tommy leads Adam rapidly through the maze of hallways to the cafeteria where they grab lunch, a massive burger for Tommy and a salad for Adam. The ladies running the place have apparently been waiting for Tommy and know that it’s his birthday. They hand him a small tower of a chocolate cake with one candle on top and two forks. They also pass them two bottles of beer with a wink and a “just don’t tell anyone” and then Adam and Tommy are on their way to Tommy’s room to eat.

“Making friends with the natives I see,” Adam says as they settle in.

Tommy laughs. “Yeah. Janice and Hannah are awesome. Janice makes this killer omelet on Sundays – has all kinds of meat in it and not a single solitary vegetable.”

“A vegetable now and then wouldn’t kill you, you know.”

“Whatever. It’s amazing. Big as your face, man. And overflowing with bacon and sausage and cheese and ham and-“

Adam laughs, he doesn’t think he will ever get tired of Tommy’s enthusiasm for food. “I get the point. It’s a meat feast pizza inside some eggs.”

“Yeah, pretty much.” Tommy bites down on his burger and sighs. Adam shakes his head fondly. This feels good. This is what they used to do. Then he looks again.

Tommy’s long-sleeved t-shirt is hanging loose on the right side where his arm is gone somewhere below the elbow. With nothing to give it shape or purpose the sleeve is just hanging there limp. It’s the first time Adam is actually aware of the reality of Tommy’s missing hand.

Tommy had taken his prosthetic off when they’d gotten to his room, slipped out of the harness like it was second nature to him and then gone and sat down at the table. Now Adam can’t stop staring. He knows he needs to get over it but he’s never actually seen Tommy’s right arm without the bandages, just the stump and not his hand.

Adam looks up in the silence and sees Tommy watching him.

“I’m sorry. I just – “

“It’s okay. I did the same thing myself the first time the bandages came off. Still do some days. Just sit in front of the mirror and stare.”

“Does it hurt?”

Tommy shrugs. “Not really. Not any more. I get those phantom sensations and pains now and then. Mostly right after the surgery. They say it gets better for most people with time. But for some folks the sensations never completely go away. So, who knows?”

Adam’s making himself look at Tommy’s face and not his arm, he’s not sure he’d ever be able to stop staring if he looked down again right now.

“It’s okay. Really,” Tommy says. He pushes up the sleeve on his right arm till it’s near his shoulder, exposing his arm completely.

“Look, I know I was a jerk to you, and I’m sorry. I was just really fucking angry, you know? Not at you but at the whole situation.”

Adam nods, caught by the sight of Tommy’s arm. At the way it just stops half way through his Depeche Mode tattoo so that the stem of the rose just cuts off. Which means…

“Your Libra tat?”

Tommy looks down, turns his arm so that the inside is facing Adam.

“Gone,” Tommy says, quietly. “There was too much damage to the tissue from the infection. It was better to cut down to healthy tissue and make sure I didn’t need any more surgery later.”

“Oh god, Tommy. I’m so sorry.”

Tommy shrugs. “’S’okay. It is what it is, you know?”

But it isn’t and they both know it.

“You can touch it.”

Adam looks up, knowing his shock has to be plastered across his face.

“It’s okay. Its actually kinda homework for me. Sort of.” Tommy ducks his head and then looks back up, a hint of a blush on his cheeks. “I have to desensitize the skin so it’s easier to wear the prosthesis, except that all that time I was bitching and moaning, I didn’t exactly do it, so now… Now it still kinda like hurts more than I want it to when I wear the thing. So really, like, you would like be helping me out.”

Adam laughs, it’s the only thing he can do when Tommy starts rambling like that. “Okay, okay. Yeah. I’d like to, is that weird?”

“Maybe,” Tommy says, with a smirk, “but then, you’re weird, so that’s okay.”

Adam gets up and walks over to Tommy. He reaches one hand out and then stops, his fingers hovering over Tommy’s skin.

Tommy looks up at Adam. There’s something there in Tommy’s eyes that Adam can’t read. Some need that he doesn’t understand. “Please,” Tommy says softly. “I want – “

Adam folds himself down until he is resting on his knees in front of Tommy and then lets his fingers brush against Tommy’s bicep. It doesn’t feel any different than he remembers. Its just skin on skin. Tommy’s under his own. He strokes his hand down the length of Tommy’s arm, watching John Wayne’s likeness shift under his fingers as the skin bends beneath his touch.

“How does it feel?” Adam asks.

“G-good.” Tommy says. “Kinda tickles.”

Tommy shivers, his eyes tracking Adam’s fingers as they slide down the remnant of the rose between the “D” and the “M” in his Depeche Mode tat and finally settle at the base of his stump.

Tommy squeaks and then giggles. “Sorry,” he mumbles. “It’s really ticklish right now. Gets that way after being cooped up in the socket.”

Adam stills his hand. “Should I stop?”

“No, no. It’s okay. Just. It’s just different than it used to be.”

Adam nods and lets his fingers move again, watching them glide across the perfectly rounded end of Tommy’s arm, listening to Tommy’s breathing. The skin is still pink and mottled in a few places, scarring he assumes, but none of it is on the very bottom where the bone would press into the skin, there it’s all smooth and new.

“What made you change your mind?” Adam asks, mesmerized by the way Tommy’s skin feels.

“Hmm?”

“About the prosthesis. You were so against it and now you look like a pro using it. What changed?”

“Oh.” Tommy shivers as Adam’s fingers press against one of the lines of scar tissue.

“Ummm. I dunno really. I was tired of being miserable all the time. Kind of? It’s hard to explain. I was so angry about what happened and for a while there was just this wall of pain. My hand hurt all the fucking time, even through the drugs. I couldn’t sleep, I couldn’t think. I couldn’t feed myself or wipe my own ass. It was just fucking awful. And I wanted it to end.”

Tommy looks away, out the window at something, when he speaks again his voice is hollow and distant.

“For a while I even wished I had died in the crash.”

Tommy turns back to Adam, tears clouding his eyes. “I’m sorry. I know that’s gotta hurt, but its true.”

Adam nods, not trusting his voice.

“I just hated everything. And I really, really wanted someone to blame.” Tommy shrugs. Adam can feel the movement under his fingers as Tommy’s arm rises and falls within his grasp. “My head doc says that’s why I turned on you. Sorry about that.”

“It’s okay,” Adam whispers.

“No. It’s not. But, thanks. There was a whole fuck ton of talking,” Tommy says with a groan and Adam smiles. “Yeah, you know how I feel about that.” Adam nods because he really does know. Tommy’s a talker, but only with a few select people.

“Well I didn’t really talk for the longest time. I just sulked. And kicked things. Then when I did start talking it all came out as screaming and yelling.”

Adam nods, he was on the receiving end of some of that. Tommy nods back.

“One night I was out in the garden – they make us do these meditation walk things.” Tommy rolls his eyes but there’s a soft smile there that Adam finds curious. “And I was kicking things on the path and bitching at the air cause Doc said I had to try talking out my feelings some more.

“There was a full moon that night, I remember it came up over the hill looking like this huge fucking pumpkin. It was so big and so close it was like you coulda walked up the path and touched it.” He shrugs again. “Something about it… I started yelling at it. At the moon. Asking why the fuck they’d done this to me. What did I ever do to anyone to deserve getting fucked up like this? To have everything I ever wanted taken away?”

Adam reaches one hand out to touch the tear on Tommy’s cheek. “Did you get an answer?”

Tommy looks at him, his eyes shinning with more than tears. “Yeah,” he whispers. “Yeah I did.”

Tommy’s silent for a moment and Adam watches his face – the muscles around his mouth and around his eyes tensing and relaxing as emotions crowd together and spill over.

“I heard this voice say ‘we’re sorry’,” Tommy says, his voice soft and just a little awestruck. “And then ‘we couldn’t stop what was to come but we did what we could to make it hurt less.’”

“Wow.”

“Yeah.”

“And that was it? That made you change your mind?”

“No. Yes. Sort of?” Tommy looks down at his arm. Adam’s still rubbing circles across it.

“I mean I was still mad. And I was still yelling at people but something about that night made things a little easier somehow. Like somehow I got it finally – that thing you were always talking about, how spirit is always with us, always around. That whole spirit as separate from religion and churches thing.

“I stopped fighting the meditation walks as much, especially when there was a moon I could see. I’d go find a tree to lean against and just look up and watch the moon rise or set across the sky. Some nights I’d talk – about whatever, the day or how much I hated losing my hand. Other nights I would just listen.”

“What did you hear?” Adam asks, caressing the new skin at the base of Tommy’s arm.

“Sometimes nothing. Sometimes thoughts or words, sometimes music. All different things. I fell asleep out there one night. Got in so much trouble for scarring the staff.” Tommy laughs. “I had to promise to be extra nice to Ahmed after that one!”

Adam smiles along with Tommy. “I’ll bet.”

“Yeah, it was worth it though. Had some cool dreams.”

Tommy falls silent, his eyes focused on something just beyond them both and Adam is content to leave him to his thoughts. Adam moves his fingers up along the underside of Tommy’s arm, where the skin is pale and unmarked by ink. The muscles under his fingers are firm and strong, healthy.

“So, no more fighting the doctors?” Adam asks.

“Nah, that got old. Besides, that guy you sent – John Denner?

Adam raises his eyes to Tommy’s and tries not to look too pleased. “You met him?”

“Yep. Sick ass guitar player!”

Adam laughs. “So, good idea?”

“Better than. I’ve got a sleeve coming from him to practice with, it’s black with these red flames and one of his modified picks attached at the end. I can’t fucking wait!”

“You’re gonna play again?” Adam asks, and he knows he’s failed miserably at keeping the hope out of his voice.

Tommy nods and takes a breath. “Gonna try. I want to. I just – I don’t know…”

“Hey, it’s okay. Whatever happens. However it works out. It’s okay.” Adam takes hold of both of Tommy’s arms, holding him tightly and looking him square in the eyes. He’s trying to pour every ounce of confidence and love he has into his words and just hopes Tommy can understand what he’s trying to say.

After a moment Tommy nods. “Thanks.”


	9. Card 8 (External influences) - Knight of Sword

Card 8 (External influences) - Knight of Sword

_The Knight of Swords represents the fiery part of Air; he is the wind, the storm. He represents the violent power of motion applied to an apparently manageable element. … He is a warrior helmed, and for his crest he bears a revolving wing. Mounted upon a maddened steed, he drives down the Heavens, the Spirit of the Tempest. In one hand is a sword, in the other a poniard. He represents the idea of attack.  
\- Aleister Crowley, The Book of Thoth, Court Cards_

 

Robyn picks up the next card and turns it face up in the row along the side of the table. Tommy is watching her face this time so he catches the smile that appears there. He looks down at the card and back up to Robyn.

“What is it?” he asks.

Robyn glances over at Adam and her smile gets brighter. Adam frowns and leans forward. His face scrunches up and then he groans.

“No, no… really?”

Robyn laughs and pats Adam on the knee. “You didn’t think you’d be left out of a reading as intense as this, did you?”

“But its Tommy’s reading, not mine!”

“And you two are nearly inseparable these days!” She mirrors his tone, teasing him.

Tommy waves a hand at the two of them trying to get their attention. “Someone want to tell me what’s going on?”

Adam sighs. Robyn laughs again.

“That’s my card,” Adam says gesturing at the card on the table with what Tommy is sure was supposed to look like a careless toss of his hand.

“Huh?”

Adam groans. Tommy rolls his eyes and motions to Adam to get on with it with a wave of his hand. “Whenever I use a significator, that’s the card I use.”

“Still not making sense.” Tommy shakes his head and tosses out his hands.

Robyn huffs a sound in Adam’s direction, something between fondness and frustration, and faces Tommy.

“Sometimes in tarot readings we can choose one card to represent the person having their cards read. Usually that card is one of the court cards – the king, queen, prince or princess, though Crowley uses the term knight instead of king. You choose which one to use based on your age and your astrological sign and then which gender you feel most comfortable with.”

Robyn points a hand at the card.

“As an Aquarius, Adam is an air sign which in this deck equals swords. As an adult, mostly male –“

“Hey now! I resemble that!” Adam sits up straight and props his hands on his hips with a grin.

“- mostly male identified person,” Robyn says, over Adam’s protests. “Adam’s card is the knight or the king.”

“And the fact that his card just showed up in my reading means what?” Tommy asks, pointedly ignoring Adam’s antics.

“That he’s important in your life.”

“Well, yeah.” Tommy laughs, winking at Adam. “I had noticed that part.”

Robyn smiles back at him. “Well, this card sits in the seventh position which is all about external influences. So its means that the Knight of Swords, who is probably Adam, but maybe if you squint and look real hard, could be someone else, has some impact on your life and the situation at hand.”

“Sounds pretty straight forward to me,” Tommy says.

Robyn grins. “Every once in a while the cards can be amazingly straight forward.”

 

~~~~

_Happiness radiates off the cards now, happiness and fulfillment. There is a sense of time and maturity, of lessons long coming and questions asked over a long period of time. Robyn can feel the subtle shift of energy as the card settles itself within the spread. Something about this relationship is a gift, and maybe even an apology from the universe for everything that swirls around these two men._

 

It all starts with a text message that is really a homework assignment from his extremely evil physical therapist.

Tommy’s right-handed, or he was until the accident, now he’s only got a left hand and a claw, so that means learning to use his left for everything he used to use his right for, like writing and punching buttons and fucking jerking off. And oh yeah, texting. All of it, including the jerking off, is now homework. Homework! His physical therapist is the devil incarnate, and Tommy should know, he’s met a whole bunch of devils in his lifetime. But Ahmed? He takes the fucking cake.

So texting. Left-handed.

He tried texting with his claw; that was a monumental disaster. First, he has next to no small motor control with the thing, which is why he has a whole other set of homework to do for that stupid piece of hardware. Add in the fact that the fucking iPhone that Adam got him to replace his busted up Blackberry only responds to fizzio-electric-something or other so you have to touch it with actual skin and presto, no work-y with the claw-y. Thanks.

All of which means Tommy spends nearly twenty minutes staring at his phone trying to figure out what the hell to write and how to do it – with his fucking left hand – before he finally calls up Adam’s contact information, stabs in a badly spelled, horribly typed and mangled message and hits send. Ten minutes after that Adam is in his ear laughing so hard he sounds like he’s dying.

“What the actually fuck, Tommy Joe?”

“Shut up. It was homework,” Tommy says, adjusting the Bluetooth in his ear and leaning back against the headboard. “I had to text someone.”

“So, I’m homework now? Thanks.”

“Fuck you. You know what I mean.”

Adam’s still laughing as he talks. “No, really. I have no fucking clue what you meant. What the hell did you say?”

Tommy rolls his eyes and stretches out his legs along the bed. This is so fucked up. “I said ‘hey big boy, come up and see me some time.’”

Adam howls with laughter on the other end of the cell phone, an ocean or three away.

“Bastard,” Tommy mumbles, waiting for Adam to catch his breath.

“You did not… actually type that shit to me…”

“Shut up,” Tommy grumbles, which only makes Adam laugh harder, if that’s even possible.

“Oh damn,” Adam says eventually, a smile still clearly evident in his voice. “I needed that.”

“Well.” Tommy is not pouting. He’s really not. “Glad I could help.”

“You did. Thanks.”

“So,” Tommy says, amazed at how good it feels to talk to Adam. He’s missed this. “How was the show tonight? Or is it morning? And where the fuck are you anyway?”

“Copenhagen.”

“That’s cool.”

“Yeah. One concert here, two in Munich, one in Hamburg and then two in Berlin.”

“Wow, Bet the German fans are thrilled with the expanded run.”

“They seem to be.” Tommy can hear rustling on the other end of the phone and then a double thud like a pair of boots falling to the floor. “Last night’s show was good. Sold out.”

Tommy snorts. “Of course.”

“Yeah well,” Adam mumbles, and Tommy can hear the doubt that’s always there in the middle of a long stretch of work.

“But you always wonder if they’ll come. They love you, man. When are you going to accept that?” Tommy clicks his claw open and shut to emphasis his point, even though Adam can’t actually see him.

Adam chuckles. “Listen to you, all rational and shit.”

“One of us has to be.”

“Yeah.” Adam is quiet for a long while and Tommy is content to sit on the other end of the line just listening to him breathe. It’s almost like being back on the bus and sitting side by side on the couches as the world rolls by. “I missed this. I miss … you.”

Tommy swallows past the lump in his throat. “Me too,” he says softly.

 

That conversation starts a round of phone calls, late night, early morning, whenever either one has the time to get to the phone. Tommy doesn’t want to think about what the bill must look like, doesn’t give a shit really. It feels so fucking good to be talking to Adam again without all the guilt and the screaming, even if most of the screaming had been coming out of his mouth.

One conversation leads to another leads to another and before Tommy knows it he’s talking to Adam about his sister’s new kid and how he’s always thought he’d be a dad one day.

“But now…” Tommy says, with a sigh. He kicks a speck of dust around on the floor of his room.

“Now what?” Adam asks. “Did your dick fall off when I wasn’t looking?”

Tommy laughs, appalled.

“You lost your hand,” Adam says.

Tommy can hear voices in the background and the squeal of feedback which means he must be either getting ready for sound check or just finishing up with one. Adam huffs into the phone, a sound that has nothing to do with the show and everything to do with how stupid Adam thinks Tommy is being. Nice to know he hasn’t lost his ability to tell the difference.

“That has nothing to do with your capacity to be a father. To raise a child. I think you’d be a great dad. And you still have all the requisite skills to make a baby.”

“Except for you know, like, the whole person to have a kid with and shit.”

“Eh, that’s the easy part.”

“Right.”

“What? I bet I can find you a sweet little brunette who would be happy to be your baby momma.”

“Ugh. No thank you!”

“You don’t like little brunettes any more?”

Tommy shrugs and stops himself from fiddling with his hair with his claw. He did that once and the nurses had to cut the damn strands out with actual scissors. So not going there again.

“I don’t know. Honestly? I don’t know what I like any more.”

There’s a long pause and Tommy wishes he dared ask Adam what he’s thinking but then he’d have to come up with some answer about what he was thinking himself which would be awkward since he has no fucking clue.

“Huh,” is all Adam says. “Well, last I checked there were about a million fan girls lined up ready to have your love child, so I don’t really think that’s gonna be an issue, Ratliff.”

“Bite me, Lambert. They all really want to have your glitter child and you know it.”

Adam laughs and then sings out. “Born with glitter on my face!”

“In your brain, you mean.”

“Mm hmm.”

 

“So what’s it like?” Tommy asks, squirming out of his shoulder harness and dumping his prosthesis on the bed. They’ve been talking for nearly an hour now and his stump is fucking sore. He needs out of the socket so he can start in on his massage routine before he falls asleep with the stupid thing on. Once was enough, thank you very much.

“What’s what like?” Adam asks and then Tommy can hear sounds of chewing. Room service must have finally shown up with breakfast.

“Fucking a guy.”

“You drop your pants and stick your dick in. What’s so complicated about that?”

“I know what it looks like, shithead. I have watched most of your porn collection. I meant, what’s it like for you? When you… I mean. Do you. Shit. Do you fuck the guy? Or does he fuck you?”

“Depends.”

“That’s helpful,” Tommy says, wincing as he works through a knot in his forearm muscle – the- what the hell was it that Patrick called it the Brachi-something or other?

“Well…”

“Stop being such a girl and answer the question.”

“I’m being a girl?”

“Yes.” Tommy grits his teeth, breathing through the pain of the knot releasing and then sighs in relief when it relaxes completely.

“Fine.”

There’s a slurp followed by the clink of glass on glass on the other end of the phone that sounds suspiciously like tea, though it might be orange juice, last Tommy knew Adam went back and forth on what he likes to drink in the mornings.

“It depends on the guy and the situation. And how I’m feeling. A lot of the time I’ll fuck him, especially for a hook up these days. I just really don’t want to deal with the press around some guy showing pictures of his dick in my ass, you know?”

“Yeah, Perez would have a fucking field day with that.”

“God. Right?” Adam groans and then goes on. “But, with the right guy?” There’s a pause and Tommy can imagine Adam’s shrug and how his features soften when he’s being thoughtful. “I used to bottom with Drake once in a while. That was cool, but I knew something was off when I stopped wanting it. That’s kind of my tell. If I can’t trust you enough to let you in like that, then…”

“Huh.”

“Huh, what?”

“I dunno, I just… I guess I just never thought about it that way. That whole letting someone in part. I mean, of course you are. A girl is when you fuck her, that’s sort of the point, right? But I guess I kinda missed that it would have the same kind of impact on a guy.”

“Yeah,” Adam says, quietly.

“What does it feel it like?”

“Hmm?”

“To get fucked?” Tommy asks and it feels like all the air in the world has vanished. There is nothing now but his heartbeat and Adam’s breathing on the other end of the line. His fingers are resting on his stump, not moving any more, just waiting, like the rest of him.

Now that’s he’s started, he can’t stop. “What does it feel like?”

Adam’s voice is nearly a whisper when he finally answers. “It’s like coming home. It can hurt but then it feels amazing and then, if you do it right, it feels better than amazing. You feel like you are going to break open from the pressure and all the sensations – there’s a million nerve endings firing off messages and once they figure out it’s all good – then you never want it to stop.”

 

“So,” Adam says, and Tommy is already cringing, knowing what Adam is going to say.

He’s completely unready for this conversation, has been all day. In fact he hasn’t slept much since they got off the phone, his mind going in a million directions at once. And now its tomorrow and the next part of the conversation has arrived, he still doesn’t know what he’s going to say.

“That thing you asked me yesterday?” Adam pauses, and Tommy sinks lower into his chair pulling at the hem of his hoodie.

“Yeah?”

“Um…Why now?”

That is so not what Tommy was expecting and it brings him up short, stops the rodents running in circles in his head and chewing everything in sight.

“Uh, well,” Tommy says, struggling to put what he’s been feeling into words. “I was just wondering…” he says finally, and he knows it’s a cop out.

“Uh huh. Now who’s being the girl?”

Tommy sighs.

“I need to know, Tommy.”

“You know all those times you asked me before? About us? About what we did on stage and how I felt about it?”

“Yeah?”

“I miss it. I miss you. A lot.”

“Huh.”

“Weird, I know.”

“No. Not really. I miss all of that too.”

“Oh.”

Tommy runs his hand through his fringe and then across the top of his head. The sides are shaved again, finally. He still needs to get it bleached, but it feels good, like something in his world is back in its proper place. In the silence that’s settled between them it feels like Adam is sitting right next to him. Like he could lean into his warmth, press his face into Adam’s neck and just let go.

“I miss just getting to touch you,” he says softly. “I miss you pulling my hair and calling me ‘pretty kitty’ and… I know that was just what we did on stage but then it wasn’t. I don’t know when that changed. And you’ve been gone and I’ve been cooped up here dealing with all this crap, and all I can think about is the way your hands feel around my neck and how- fuck! How good you smell right after a shower.”

“Oh.”

“Yeah.”

“So, you…”

“Yeah.”

“Not so straight.”

“Apparently not.” Tommy smiles, it feels like a weight’s been lifted off his chest. “At least not when it comes to you.”

“Ah,” Adam says. “Good.”

 

It all culminates with one of the most intense rounds of phone sex of Tommy’s whole entire life.

The phone gets answered on the fourth or fifth ring. There’s a ton of noise in the background, voices shouting and cheering and then Sutan’s talking, not Adam.

“Hey, Tommy! Hang on a sec…”

“Sutan?”

“Sorry, sorry… had to get into the dressing room,” Sutan says, laughing. “Crowd is rowdy tonight honey! The Italians know how to party, let me tell you!”

“Oh shit. Is he still on stage? Did I mess up the ti-“

“No, you’re fine sweetheart. Just got done.”

“I can call back.”

“Don’t you dare. He wants to talk to you. Made me hold his damn phone for him in case you called. You hang up now and I’m gonna be walking funny for a week! And _not_ in a good way!”

Tommy laughs at that, he can imagine Sutan’s hands flying in wicked circles around the room as he punctuates his sentences. There’s a burst of sound that has to be the dressing room door opening and then relative quiet.

“Speak of the God of Glam, and ye shall summon him!” More noises as things happen far away where Tommy can’t see them. “Here you go, Tommy. You be good for Tranma!”

Tommy chuckles, he hasn’t heard that phrase in way too long. “Not for your favorite pair of Manolo Blahnik’s,” comes the old rejoiner, easy as can be.

“That’s my boy! Mwha!”

More sounds that Tommy can’t decipher, but can guess at, then Adam is on the line.

“Hey, babe!” Adam, breathless and happy, says into the phone and down Tommy’s spine.

“Hey, how’d it go?” Tommy asks, settling down on his bed.

His claw is resting on the bedside table with an assortment of PT junk, anatomy books, and the new Manson CD. He’s already done his first round of massages and exercises for the day and managed to impress Ahmed in the process. This call to Adam is his reward for being a good little patient.

“Brought down the fucking house! It was incredible. Fucking Damn! God I love this shit.”

Adam’s laughing and Tommy can’t help but join him, he sounds amazing, the after performance high zinging through his veins.

“I know. I watched the videos for last night’s show,” Tommy says.

That brings Adam up short. “You did?”

“Yep.” Tommy’s smiling, and it feels good. He’d thought it would be hard to watch the concert videos, and it was, but not as bad as he feared. It was also amazing to see Adam the way the fans do, all debauched, beautiful god and shit. “You really are incredible.”

“You think so?” Adam’s voice is soft, almost shy.

“Yeah. I do.”

“Thanks.” There’s a long pause then Adam sighs. “God I wish you were here.”

“So do I.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah.”

“Remember what it was like after the shows?”

Tommy chuckles, running his hand through his fringe, because yeah he remembers that. The manic energy and the feeling that anything was possible and the need to touch and be touched. _Oh._ “Oh…”

“Yeah…” Adam breathes out, slow and sultry. “The things I used to dream of doing to you. You were right there, looking at me with music blazing in your eyes. Drunk on performing. But I didn’t. I was so. Fucking. Good.”

Tommy gulps. “Things like… like what?”

“You wanna know?” Adam whispers. “You really wanna know?”

“Yeah… I really… wanna know.”

“You have your Bluetooth in?”

“Yeah?”

“Good.”

 _Oh shit._ Adam’s voice. That growl that makes Tommy want to drop to his knees and do anything Adam asks of him, it goes straight to his dick. He’s hard in seconds flat.

“I want to push you up against the dressing room door so I can see your face with your eyes blazing, the glitter on your skin and that fucking dark blue lipstick that you put on after _Fever_ just to taunt me.”

“You liked it,” Tommy chokes out, fingers pressed to his lips.

“Yeah. I did. Got me hard as a fucking rock. Knowing you waited to put it on so I would kiss you and then play with you.”

“Worked, too.”

“Yeah. But you’re not wearing it now, are you?”

“No.”

“Well then. Those lips are all mine.”

Tommy moans, he fucking moans. It’s been so long since Adam’s kissed him, since he’s felt that heat against his skin and he wants it so much right now. “Oh god, Adam.”

“Shhh, baby, I’ve got you.” Adam says, sounding like he’s right behind Tommy, holding him up right. “Close your eyes and let me…”

Tommy shimmies down along his bed until he can drop his head back against his pillow, then he closes his eyes and breathes in the sound of Adam all around him.

“That’s it,” Adam says. Tommy can hear the soft slide of fabric, Adam starting to take off parts of his costume, getting settled somewhere in his dressing room. “That’s it. That’s my pretty kitty. So fucking pretty, shining under the lights. Teasing me.”

“Only fair, you tease me.”

Adam chuckles, low and dark. “True. But I’m not teasing now. Not much. Gonna make you feel so good.

“Raise your hand up baby, follow me.” Tommy shivers. “All that pretty hair hanging in your eyes, have to move it to one side, get it out of the way, so I can taste your skin. Kiss your cheek.”

Tommy pushes his fingers through his hair, pressing into his scalp and down along the side of his face.

“Soft, so soft…” Adam sighs, and Tommy shifts his touch, mirroring his actions to Adam’s words, his fingers just barely touching his skin.

“I want to taste you, take little bites out of you all down your neck. Push your shirt open and suck up a mark on your collarbone. Make sure everyone knows you’re mine.

“Lick those pretty little nipples of yours until your mewling under my tongue, pressing up, begging for more because it hurts so good.”

Tommy’s fingers find their way to his nipples, pinching just a little harder than he likes because it’s Adam’s voice in his ear conjuring sensations across his skin.

“Gonna slide my hand down your stomach. Press in low and deep, just behind those sinfully tight pants you love to wear. See how far I can get before I just have to undo the button.

“Take my time. Tease us both… “

Tommy has his hand inside his sleep pants, rubbing against the cotton of his briefs, shivering as Adam growls low and dark in his ear.

“Then, when I can’t wait any fucking more, I’m gonna tear those damn pants off your skinny ass so I can dig my fingers into that pretty flesh. Mark it up so good. Bet you bruise pretty.”

Tommy’s moaning, his hand wrapped around his dick through the fabric, squeezing in time with Adam’s voice and it feels so fucking good.

“What do you want, baby?”

“Wh- What?” Tommy manages to stutter through the haze of need he’s drowning in.

“What do you want? My mouth or my hands?”

“Oh fuck.”

“Not tonight.”

Tommy groans, there’s a promise in Adam’s words that makes Tommy shiver. “Adam.”

“What do you want? Tonight.”

“Um… Hands. I want your hands. Oh god, please touch me.”

“Anything for you baby. Anything. Gotta slick you up first though,” Adam purrs, and that has Tommy scrambling for his bottle of lube. The claw and books get knocked to the floor when he misses the drawer-pull on the first try. He gets the drawer open and his hand around the bottle and falls back onto his bed with a groan.

“Mmm, so good.”

Tommy can hear the wet slap of flesh on flesh through the phone that tells him Adam’s got his own dick slicked up and pumping through his fist.

_Shit, they are really doing this. Together._

“Can you feel it babe?” Adam asks quietly. “Can you feel my hand on your dick?”

“Oh, man…”

“Stroking you, sliding down to roll your balls between my fingers. Do you like that?”

Tommy scrunches up to push his briefs out of the way with his stump and then collapses back as he strokes his slicked up fingers down his cock. He curls his hand around his balls and rolls them between his fingers, squeezing just a little.

“That, yeah…”

“What else? Tell me what you like.”

“I don’t know… “

“Come on Tommy Joe. Tell me. Tell me what you like. Then we can make your physical therapist happy and get some more of your homework done.” Adam chuckles and the sound goes right through Tommy making him want to roll around in the sheets and wrap himself in Adam forever.

“Shit, Adam.”

“Just tell me,” Adam says, and this time there’s a note of power like Tommy remembers from the stage. Its like Adam is right there pulling him against his chest, tangling his long fingers in Tommy’s hair and tugging his head around however he wants it. It’s everything Tommy needs and wants.

“Tighter. Make it hurt, just a little,” Tommy says.

“You want me to squeeze your cock in my hands? Make you work to get through my fist?”

“Yes, please, shit, yes…harder, just a little harder… “ Tommy tightens his grip as he drags his fist up his shaft and over the crown, then down again, a little tighter each time. “Like that. Oh god, yeah.”

Adam moans into his ear. “Feels so good, Tommy.”

“Mmm, hmmm.” Tommy moans, stroking up again. “Oh oh, oh- god! Adam!” With another squeeze he’s coming, faster and harder than he’s come since he first learned what his dick could do.

When Tommy can comprehend reality again, he hears Adam chuckling.

“What?” Tommy grouses at Adam. “You never jizzed like a teenager?”

“Actually…” Adam says, and the way he says it has Tommy remembering all the times he watched Adam turn pink as his blush crept up his neck and under his make-up.

“You too?”

“Yep,” Adam admits with a goofy giggle. “Damn, Tommy.”

“Yeah.”

Tommy stretches out on his bed, Adam’s breathing slowing in his ear, his own come cooling in his hand and on his chest, too tired to move, and stupidly happy.

“When the fuck do you get home?” Tommy asks finally.

“Three weeks,” Adam grumbles.

“Shit.”

“Yeah.”

“Call you tomorrow?”

Adam laughs. “Do I get to suck you off?”

Tommy can feel the blush starting at his fucking belly button. He mumbles something that might be a yes or might be just sheer, ridiculous embarrassment because damn he wants Adam’s lips around his cock now, and Adam is off and laughing again.


	10. Card 9 (Hopes or fears around the situation) - Five of Discs

Card 9 (Hopes or fears around the situation) - Five of Discs

_The symbol represents five disks in the form of the inverted Pentagram, instability in the very foundations of Matter. The effect is that of an earthquake. They are, however, representative of the five Tatvas; these hold together, on a very low plane, an organism which would otherwise disrupt completely. The background is an angry, ugly red with yellow markings. The general effect is one of intense strain; yet the symbol implies long-continued inaction.  
\- Aleister Crowley, The Book of Thoth, The Small Cards_

 

There are two cards left to turn when Tommy looks back at the table. He looks over at Robyn to see her watching him.

“Go on,” he says, nodding to the cards. “Turn it over. How bad can it be? You’ve already shown me a crumbling tower, ruin, misery, utter joy, and crazy magic men. What’s left?”

“Tommy…” Adam says, and it sounds like a warning mixed with worry.

Tommy shrugs. This whole thing has gone differently than either of them expected, better to rip the rest of the Band-Aid off and see it through to the end than let it fester. He looks back at Robyn. She smiles gently at him, nods and flips over the second to last in the reading.

“The Five of Discs,” Robyn says, as she settles the card in place in the spread. “Crowley named this card ‘worry’ because it represents trapped matter, stuck earth. Like an earthquake about to happen, simmering under the surface. Discs, which other decks call Pentacles, represent the earth and all things physical or material – so work, money, family life, even love and sex.”

“Awesome,” Tommy says with a snort, flopping back in his chair. It’s another bitchy card spouting fire and brimstone colors. Five small circles, discs he supposes, forming an inverted star – ooh an upside down pentacle, how occult. Behind it are larger circles, sort of, shot through with lines of yellow and orange that look like fire or lava.

“It sits in the ninth position and reflects your hopes and fears around the situation.”

Tommy crosses one leg over the other and bounces it gently in the air. “So I am worried, or will be worried about the situation?”

“Will be, all of this is about things still to come.” Robyn nods. “The concern will be about the situation and about how it affects your finances, your career, your love life, anything within the realm of the material plan.”

“So, like this situation is gonna to be something pretty big if it has me worrying about all those things, right?”

Robyn looks down and then back up. “The Tower is about vast changes, yes.”

“Ah.” Tommy looks back at the cards and nods his head in time with his leg. “Awesome.”

 

~~~~

 

_Robyn shivers at the sound in the Tommy’s voice; it’s as though he has accepted something dark and shadowed in that moment. It’s something she wishes she never had to hear anyone ever accept. And knowing, seeing what the cards have seen for him, only makes her feel worse._

_On the card, the fire behind the discs pulses as Robyn glares at the spread. Tension radiates off it, need and fear, desperation and hope all mixed together and fighting to be heard, fighting to outrace the shaking earth._

 

“They’re letting me out next week,” Tommy tells Adam over the phone.

He’s sitting in the one comfortable chair in his room facing the window overlooking the trees blowing in the side yard. He’s buried in his oldest, softest hoodie, hood up over his head and sleeves pulled down over his hand and claw. He ditched his jeans for a pair of sleep pants that he stole from Adam back when they were on tour together and even put on the socks his mother knitted for him a few months back. He wants comfort damn it.

There’s a hive of angry bees buzzing in his stomach making him feel nauseous and terrified all at once.

“That’s great!”

He tugs at one tattered sleeve with his claw, tugging until it’s all the way down over his fingers. “Yeah.”

“That’s not great?”

“No, it is,” Tommy says, trying to sound excited and knowing he’s not fooling either of them.

“But?”

Tommy doesn’t answer. He doesn’t know how to say the words.

“What’s the matter, Tommy?”

Tommy sighs and stares out at the trees.

“Talk to me.”

“I… There’s… Mom wants… Fuck.” Tommy clicks his claw open and closed against his knees. “They had to let my apartment go after the accident. No point in keeping it if I was going to be in the hospital for months. So… like, I don’t have any place to go.”

“Oh.”

“Yeah. I mean, I do. But shit. I can’t stand the idea of living at my mom’s again at this age you know? And Dave’s getting married and Mia’s, well Mia…and all my shit’s in storage. And… I just don’t fucking know what to do.”

“Man…”

“Yeah.”

Tommy watches his claw click open, feeling his back muscles flex and relax with each movement. Adam is silent on the other end, they both are, Tommy figures there’s nothing much to be said really.

“Come stay with me,” Adam says.

“What?”

“Stay with me. I have a guest room. And after all those months on tour, we know we can get along. Come stay with me.”

Tommy pushes his hood back off his face. “Really? Are you sure?”

“Yeah. Really. I want you to.”

“Wow. Um. Okay. Yeah. Thanks.”

 

***

 

It’s amazingly easy to settle into a routine. Adam cooks, or orders in or microwaves depending on his mood and what they have in the house. Tommy does the dishes, which now that he’s gotten used to the differences in using his more natural looking myo-electric arm means he even looks kind of normal when he does them. Adam has a cleaning lady, so neither of them has to deal with their own laundry, which Tommy privately adores and suspects Adam does too, though he’s always trying to kick his stuff into his closet before she shows up. They spend their free time watching movies and talking music. It’s almost like it was right after GlamNation only this time with them in the same house.

Being in the same house means they can touch again and taste again and Tommy feels like he is refilling some part of himself that has been empty for too damn long. It’s nothing big or monumental. It’s not like they start having sex or declare their undying love for one another. Tommy’s not ready for that and Adam seems to understand, or at least says he does. Tommy does move into the guest room, but he ends up on the couch curled up with Adam as often as Adam ends up falling asleep watching a movie in Tommy’s room. It’s just who they are, and part of what they have been missing. If they never used to kiss off stage, well, Tommy used to have two hands. Things change.

Being in the same house also means coping together.

There’s Adam’s exhaustion after the tour and the pressure he feels to get back into the studio for his next album. Adam has a million ideas simmering behind his eyeballs but he’s so damn tired he can barely put notes together so most of the time when he tells Tommy he’s going to work on music, Tommy ends up finding Adam out on the patio, iPhone in hand, busily thumbing through round after round of _Angry Birds._ Never actually writing.

There’s also a longing that Tommy can see in Adam for something else, something different, simpler maybe, Tommy’s not sure what it is really. Adam’s been on the fast track going full speed for two tours, three if you count Idol, and he’s fraying around the edges. He needs something to ground him in why he wanted this in the first place, Tommy’s just not sure if either of them knows what that looks like.

Then there’s Tommy’s ongoing recovery. He’s still studying with John Denner but the progress is slower than Tommy would like. Denner seems pleased, but Tommy can remember when playing was simple and easy, not this brutal adjustment of learning to make the muscles of his right arm do what his fingers used to do, or his left hand relearn every fret and slide. And shit, he had forgotten how much building calluses hurts.

Tommy’s even being paid to play _Guitar Hero_ for the prosthetics testing program out of Johns Hopkins. Beyond the ultra coolness of getting paid to play the game is the fact that he has what amounts to a job again. There’s money left from the settlement, but really most of what there was of it, after courts and insurance adjusters got done picking away at the accident victim’s claims, went to cover the medical expenses his insurance didn’t cover, which was a frightening amount. There’s other bits of money that have trickled in from his part on Adam’s album, and the fan shops selling his merchandise, but when he’s honest about it, he’s been terrified of living on his own again. He’s been flat broke and he’s been well paid. He liked living the life of a rock star thank you very much- it did not suck. Going back to poverty was pretty low on his list of things to do, especially with a prosthetic arm. He tried talking to Adam about it one night but Adam just said the house bills were covered. Tommy doesn’t want to be taken care of like that. He wants to earn his keep. The testing program lets him make a start on that.

Things seem to be holding together for both of them until about a week before the Grammys, for which Adam is nominated yet again. Then it all falls apart.

 

***

 

“Stupid fucking fuck!”

Adam is cursing as he slams open the front door and from the look and sound of things he’s been cursing since he got on the freeway, which means the meeting with 19E went very, very badly.

Tommy stops in the doorway to the kitchen and watches as Adam kicks off his boots and tosses his bag on the floor muttering things about idiot executives and tiny brains. He tracks Adam as the whirling storm of rage that used to be a sane man spins past him and out to the patio, still muttering and cursing.

When Adam is safely on the other side of the glass doors Tommy pulls the emergency bottle of tequila out of the cupboard, digs around for a bag of chips and some guac; then, his life in his hands, goes out to beard the lion.

On the patio, Adam is actually calmer than Tommy expected. He’s leaning over the railing with his head between his hands. Of course that could just be the beginning of a new storm, it’s hard to tell sometimes.

“I take it the assholes were out in force?” Tommy says, dumping the supplies on the table. He snags the tequila and walks over to Adam.

Adam turns, his eyeliner’s smudged and his eyes are red. “Oh goodie. Tequila.”

“I was in the mood.”

“Gimme.” Adam holds out his hand.

Tommy passes the bottle over. Adam cracks the seal and takes a long swing, then another one. Tommy presses his lips together and nods.

“That good, huh?”

Adam releases the bottle with a wet pop.

“You know,” Adam says, waving the bottle in the air. “You’d think that after two fucking platinum albums and not one but two fucking sold out world fucking tours, that I could have a little more say in what I do with my own fucking career!”

“They hated the idea,” Tommy says. It’s not a question, not after that declaration.

Tommy and Adam had both known that it was going to be an uphill battle to get 19E behind Adam’s latest idea, so Tommy’s a little confused as to why Adam is this messed up over the meeting.

“Hate? Nah.” Adam turns in a slow circle, punctuating his point with a thrust of the tequila bottle. “Hate implies they actually give a fuck what I have to say.”

“Oh.”

Tommy knows it’s not that bad, the suits actually do respect Adam and his talent. Mostly that same talent, and everything that drives it, just scares the living crap out of them. They gave him a remarkably long leash on the last album. Since that album went platinum faster than the first one, their trust in his talent was vindicated, and they told him as much. It also showed people that Adam had the brains as well as the voice for the business. Of course, now is not the time to point out that fact.

“Yeah.” Adam takes another slug of tequila.

“Hey, no fair, that was my idea. Hand it over.” Tommy tugs the bottle out of Adam’s hand and tips it back. His sip is much more conservative than Adam’s. Clearly one of them is going to have to stay relatively sober tonight and it looks like Tommy’s up.

“I brought out some munchies too,” Tommy says, trying to get Adam to eat something before the alcohol hits too hard. Adam ignores him, as he expected, and starts pacing.

“What the hell do they want from me?” Adam grumbles from the other side of the patio. He pivots on his heel and stalks back toward Tommy. “I thought the whole point of having me in their ‘stable’ was to have someone different and exciting. And now they tell me they want me to be more like this new kid… what’s his name…”

“Vincent?” Tommy’s eyebrows shoot into his hairline.

“Yeah, him.” Adam snorts. “Vincent Mallory! What the hell kind of name is that? Fuck.”

Tommy sips the tequila and then places it into Adam’s outstretched hand.

“Can’t even put on fucking eyeliner right,” Adam says, between gulps of tequila. “You know the bitch asked me to do it for him at the last event we were at together. What the fuck is with that? I swear if one more idiot-straight-boy-wanna-be-glam-rocker asks me to do his make up for him I am gonna cut a bitch.”

Tommy laughs because, yeah, that shit gets old really fast and way too many interviewers and wanna-bes have asked both of them to do their make up since Tommy first hooked up with Adam.

“Vincent hasn’t even hit adolescence yet,” Tommy says leaning back against the railing to watch Adam pace. “They need to wait till his voice cracks. See if he still has one after that before they start telling you to sound like him.”

“See?!” Adam waves the bottle in the air on his stalk back toward Tommy. “That’s my point exactly! He’s a fucking kid! A kid! And he’s trying to be me. Badly, I might add. What the fuck is with telling me to be like him? I’ve spent more time training my voice than that shithead’s been alive!”

“Exactly.”

Tommy’s never sure if agreeing with Adam in these moods helps or not, but arguing with him never works. Plus its true, Mallory is a little wanna-be trumped up kid who might have the chops to be something in a few years, but he ain’t no Adam Fucking Lambert and the execs at 19E know that.

“So which boss was it?” Tommy asks. Now that Mallory’s in the picture, he has an idea what might be behind the whole dust up.

“Hmm?” Adam turns, sways a little actually, and looks at Tommy confused.

“Over at 19E.”

“Um…The new guy. Astoniv-, Alconiv-something.”

Tommy hides a groan, Adam not remembering the name of someone at a meeting means he is already far drunker than he should be which means he didn’t have lunch. Tommy reaches out and snags the bottle from Adam. He gets a pout for his efforts.

“My turn, you’ve been hogging.” Tommy pretends to drink and then hangs on to the bottle. He hands Adam the bag of chips and is pleasantly surprised when Adam starts in on them.

“You know Antonovich is Mallory’s champion. He brought the kid into 19E, so of course he is going to push for him every chance he gets.”

Adam shrugs and eats a few more chips.

“The rest of them know you. They know what you can do and they know you bring in the money.”

“But-“

“Nope.” Tommy says, done with Adam’s pity party. “It was one fucking meeting Adam. You know how this shit works. They all put their two, or twenty, cents in. You go off, win a Grammy or four, go back, have another meeting and get more of what you want. Boom. It works out.”

Adam hangs his head and kicks at a spot on the ground. “Doesn’t fucking feel that way.”

“Of course not.”

“My head hurts,” Adam says, and promptly throws up all over the patio.

“Shit.” Tommy kneels beside him, rubbing his shoulders while Adam’s stomach rebels several more times. “Hey, at least you lost it out here.”

“Great,” Adam moans.

Tommy shrugs. “Easier to clean.”

“Uh huh.”

 

***

 

Tommy’s in the living room when Adam returns to the land of the living. He looks up long enough to see Adam disappear into the kitchen.

He hears the muffled sounds of ceramic on tile and then a loud, nearly orgasmic sigh, which means Adam must have found the coffee Tommy set up to brew a little while ago.

A few minutes later Adam sinks down onto the couch, hands wrapped around a mug like it’s the only thing holding him upright. He mumbles something related to the word hello before dropping his head back into the cushions.

Tommy leaves Adam to revive in peace and turns his attention back to the bass in his lap.

He’s working out with his Denner sock-pick rig. He’s finally gotten to the point where it almost feels normal to use the thing. It still looks odd as hell when he glances down to check his movements, the pick sticking out from the end of his sock-covered stump, but he’s grown to appreciate how the muscles of his forearm move, doing the work his fingers used to do. His left hand is almost back to normal as well, his calluses nearly all back. His fingers tend to ache like a son of a bitch in bad weather though, which he figures is going to suck if he can actually get good enough to tour again.

Adam groans, coughs, and groans again. “Thanks for the coffee.”

Tommy chuckles. “You’re welcome.”

“That sounds good,” Adam says, pointing his chin at the bass.

Tommy nods. “Getting there.”

“Perfectionist.”

“Pot, kettle.” Tommy plays a rift off of “Lay Me Down”, surprising Adam enough that he chokes on his coffee.

“Shit, Tommy, warn a guy,” Adam says, brushing coffee off the sweatpants he’d changed into after his run in with the tequila. “I didn’t know you’d been working on that.”

Tommy shrugs. “Seemed appropriate.”

“You did write it.”

“Co-wrote.”

Adam flaps one hand in Tommy’s general direction. Tommy strums through the rest of the song and lets the end lead him into another, not a song so much as bass line that sounds like rain and thunder.

“So,” Tommy says, drawing the word out. “You going to tell me what’s really bugging you?”

“Just a stupid meeting.” Adam shrugs. “I shouldn’t have let them get to me.”

“Yeah, and?”

“And, what?”

Tommy stops playing and looks up at Adam. “You never let them get to you like that. So?”

Adam looks at him, his eyes going dark, sighs and looks away.

“Oh,” Tommy says. He looks down at his hand where it’s clinging to the neck of his bass, knuckles white.

The air between them feels hot and cold all at once. It’s like a storm that can’t decide which way it wants to blow. Tommy thinks he could push it, tell it how to move, but he doesn’t know himself.

He forces his hand to unclench and puts his bass aside, stripping off his pick-rig and sticking it in his pocket as usual. He scratches at the exposed skin for a moment then tugs his sleeve down, over his stump.

Adam grips his cup, and Tommy hopes that it’s empty or there’s going to be liquid all over the couch when it breaks from the strain. Adam’s eyes are down, staring into the cup or something not in the cup. Something he’s searching for. At last Adam looks up and right at Tommy, his eyes more cloudy than dark now.

“What am I to you?”

Tommy’s breath catches in his throat; it’s like the storm got sucked into his chest.

“What am I, Tommy?”

“You’re… my best friend, my…” Tommy has never been good with words, not in his whole life and never in the way Adam is. And now when he needs them, they scatter from his grasp. “You’re everything.”

“But not enough,” Adam whispers, his head dropping down.

“What? No!” He sits up, looking at Adam with shock.

“Then why?”

“Why what?” But Tommy already knows, has known.

“Why the walls? Why the long-sleeve shirts and the bathrobes and keeping me just on the edge until I am crazy with need?” Adam’s soul is in his voice and it makes Tommy want to hold him and hide at the same time.

He looks away.

“I can’t do this, Tommy.”

He hears Adam push off from the couch; start to walk out of the living room. It’s now or never.

“Wait! Please… wait,” he begs.

Adam’s watching him when he looks up. “I’m – I’m sorry.” Tommy’s hand is shaking. His whole body feels as though it’s going to come apart at the seams. “I’m sorry. It’s not you.”

“Then what is it?” Adam doesn’t step closer, just seems to lean with his whole being toward Tommy. “What’s going on?”

“I,” Tommy starts, looks down at the hand in his lap. He feels like an idiot. None of this should matter. He’s no different now than he was before and yet he is. In his head he’s so very different and that changes things.

“I,” he starts again, and then changes gears. “Remember at the center? When you first saw my stump?”

Adam looks at him, confused, but he nods.

“It’s like that.”

“I don’t follow you.”

Tommy sighs. “How, like you didn’t know where to look?”

“Um… okay?”

“It’s like that for me,” Tommy says, and then quickly adds, “only with myself, about myself. I don’t, like, look the same. In here.” He taps his head with two fingers. “I know I should. I know it’s just my arm, but its not, you know?”

Tommy stares at Adam, out of words, hoping. Adam looks at Tommy and finally, finally something bright and clear flickers in his eyes.

“Oh god, Tommy.”

Tommy closes his eyes at the warmth in Adam’s voice and lets out a sob. The next thing he knows Adam’s kneeling on the floor in front of him, his arms around him, holding him tight.

“Did you think I wouldn’t want you because your hand’s gone?”

Tommy can’t speak, there’s too much pressure built up, too many times he’s needed to talk about this but refused to allow himself the luxury, afraid of what it would mean if he did. He just nods and clings to Adam, tears leaking out of his stupid eyes.

“I love you. Have been in love with you for a ridiculously long time,” Adam says, stroking his hair. “Your hand being gone doesn’t change that.”

Tommy pushes his head into the warmth of Adam’s neck. He’s hiding and not.

“Tommy, look at me.” Adam shifts just a bit and then he’s pressing his fingers against Tommy’s chin, forcing his head up. “You are beautiful.”

Tommy shakes his head, he’s spent so long believing the opposite, hating what the mirror showed him. But Adam always sees more in people than they see themselves. Tommy should have remembered that.

“Yes,” Adam says, quietly. “With or without your hand. You are beautiful.”

“It was the one thing I had,” Tommy whispers, at last. “It connected me to you. And they cut it off.”

Adam pulls back to look at Tommy, confusion clear on his face. Tommy knows he’s not making sense. He can see what he means but the words are jumbled. He waves his stump between them.

“My tat. Your tat.”

Adam’s eyes get huge as understanding hits. “The Libra tattoo?”

Tommy nods.

“Oh, baby.”

“You and your stupid astrology.” Tommy sniffs.

Adam chuckles. “I’ll paint you all twelve signs, just tell me where.”

“I just need one,” Tommy says, pouring his need into his voice. He’s sick of hiding and waiting. Sick of his own fear.

Adam answers him with a kiss, soft and sweet to start but Tommy wants more. He presses up against Adam, opening up to him, offering everything, showing Adam the only way he knows how that he’s sorry. Adam’s hands caress his face, wiping away the tears. And still Adam’s kisses are soft and gentle. He works his way down Tommy’s neck with light touches of his lips and the barest hint of his fingers. It’s amazing and maddening. Tommy moans and shivers struggling to survive inside the circle of Adam’s arms.

“Shhh,” Adam whispers against Tommy’s collarbone. “Shhhh. Trust me.”

Tommy sighs and lets go. He closes his eyes and lets himself just _feel._

Adam slides his hands under Tommy’s shirt and pushes it up and over his head. Tommy rolls with the motion, his arms rising covered in fabric, falling back down bare. His head tries to scream in fear. He’s hidden himself for so long, but this is Adam. Adam who seemed to know everything about him before they even met. Adam who’s seen him at his worst. Adam who’s shown his own demons to Tommy. How can he hide anything from this man?

Tommy opens his eyes and looks down at the tousled mess of Adam’s hair, the smooth line of Adam’s cheek, the flutter of his eyelashes, the freckles on his lips. Tommy sighs as Adam presses those lips to the skin of his shoulder, his tongue darting out to lick a line down along his bicep.

Adam’s almost to Tommy’s stump when Tommy figures out what he must have in mind. “Adam, no…”

Adam tilts his head, his lips pressed into the flesh just above one of the scar lines. They stare at each other. Tommy can’t breathe. Can’t think. He wants nothing more than for Adam to keep going, but he _shouldn’t_ want that.

Adam holds Tommy’s eyes as he kisses the scar. Tommy moans. Adam does it again. Tommy can’t stop him, can’t stop himself from wanting. His heart is racing. He grips his hand in Adam’s shirt and nods his head.

Adam turns his head and licks a line along the scar, his tongue tracing each fold and dip in the tissue. Tommy shivers, his eyes closing under the onslaught. Every touch of Adam’s tongue is going straight to Tommy’s groin and his cock is so fucking hard.

Tommy’s arm twitches under Adam’s tongue and Adam locks it in place with one hand.

Adam’s other hand is everywhere, drawing circles around his nipples, trailing down his other arm and back up, stroking down his stomach to the edge of Tommy’s sweats but no closer. He keeps stroking, out across Tommy’s arm, down his stomach, over and over in maddening, lazy strokes.

“Please…” Tommy moans, his left hand clutching at any part of Adam he can reach. He barely knows what he’s asking for, only that he needs. “Please.”

Adam’s hand plunges into Tommy’s sweatpants, his fingers pressing against Tommy’s over heated skin, and grips his cock. It’s fucking heaven. At the same time Adam's teeth scrape along the bottom edge of Tommy’s stump. His eyes snap open and he’s staring down at Adam who's tongue licking and swirling around the head of his arm, biting just hard enough at the nearly new skin to send shock waves through Tommy's blood. 

Between what Adam’s hand is doing around his cock and his mouth is doing to his stump, it’s a double dose of stimulation that has Tommy writhing and moaning in Adam’s grasp. The whole time his eyes are locked on Adam’s and it’s the look there, the need and the want that he sees in those blue blue eyes that sends him over the edge.

He’s coming over Adam’s hand, calling Adam’s name as his orgasm crashes through him and then he’s crying, his heart feeling like its going to break, has already broken. And Adam holds him and rocks him through the tears and the aftershocks.

Tommy comes back to himself to the sound of Adam humming and the feeling of Adam’s hands carding through his hair.

“Hey,” Adam says as Tommy opens his eyes.

“Hey.”

“Better?”

Tommy nods. He does feel better, lighter. He curls into to Adam’s chest and places his hand over Adam’s heart, feeling it beat through his t-shirt. Adam goes back to humming and stroking Tommy’s hair. It feels perfect. Safe. Except of course there’s a question hovering between them that only Tommy can answer.

Tommy laughs. He’s such a fucking idiot sometimes.

“What?” Adam asks, his hands going still.

“I. Am an idiot.”

“Um, okay,” Adam says, and Tommy can tell he’s confused but trying to be agreeable.

“It’s simple.” Tommy sits up and turns to face Adam. “I love you.”

“You do?”

“Yes, but don’t interrupt.”

“Ummm…”

“Shhh.” Tommy waves at him. “I love you. You love me. Yes, the world is full of stupid fucks, but since when has that ever stopped either one of us?”

Adam looks at him. “Do I get to answer this one?”

Tommy rolls his eyes.

“Well… Fine.” Adam shrugs. “Never.”

“Exactly!” Tommy says, tossing his arms in the air, feeling like he’s going to burst with joy.

“All of which means what, exactly?”

Tommy laughs, looks at Adam and then falls over laughing. “You should see your face…”

“Tommy Joe…” Adam growls.

“Okay, okay.” Tommy says, pulling his shit together. He sits up on his knees and leans toward Adam, his left hand on Adam’s shoulder to steady himself. He licks his lips and presses them to Adam’s. He puts his heart into the kiss, his passion, his need, his want, his surrender.

It takes Adam a moment to catch up to what’s happening but when he does he responds with his whole being. His arms come up around Tommy, tugging his head to one side and wrapping the other around Tommy’s waist. Adam groans into Tommy’s mouth and the pure lust in that sound makes Tommy moan and cling harder.

Needing air, Tommy pulls away. He gazes at Adam, strokes his hand softly across the bruised, freckled lips. There are no more questions.

“Let’s go to bed,” Tommy says, and grins at the brilliant smile that lights up Adam’s face.


	11. Card 10 (Final outcome) - The Sun

Card 10 (Final outcome) - The Sun

_This is one of the simplest of the cards; it represents Heru-ra-ha, the Lord of the New Aeon, in his manifestation to the race of men as the Sun spiritual, moral, and physical. He is the Lord of Light, Life, Liberty and Love. This Aeon has for its purpose the complete emancipation of the human race.  
\- Aleister Crowley, The Book of Thoth, The Sun_

 

“Last card,” Robyn says, looking at Tommy. “You ready?”

Tommy shrugs, still slouched in his chair. Ready doesn’t really factor into it any more. It’s the last card and he wants to know what it is. He kind of wants the whole reading to be over at this point. Not that he doesn’t appreciate Robyn’s efforts, it’s just that it sort of brought a great night to a very weird place and he could really use another drink.

“Do it.”

Robyn flips the card over and they all lean in.

Adam sucks in a breath.

Tommy doesn’t blame him. The final card is pretty much the last thing he was expecting after everything the deck had thrown at him. Unlike all the other doom and gloom cards, this one is bright and full of light. There are two people dancing around with their arms up and lots of rays of colored light coming off a circle of yellow at the center. The circle looks like a sun, which makes sense given that at the bottom of the card it says ‘the Sun’. The card looks down right happy.

“Well, damn,” Adam says. When Tommy looks over, Adam has a suspicious sheen in his eyes. Looking across the table to Robyn he sees that she’s grinning.

“I guess that card is as good as it looks?” Tommy asks.

Robyn nods, her grin firmly locked in place. “This is the final outcome, and I’d say that is an awesome card to get, yeah.”

“The Sun,” Adam says on a sigh. “After all the darkness. Wow.”

“Yeah. The Sun is pretty uncomplicated as tarot cards go. It’s about success and triumph. All the good things we associate with the sun at the height of its power – brilliance and glory, abundance, warmth, clarity of vision. As the final outcome it suggests that whatever path the cards are warning you about,” she waves her hand over the cards spread out on the table. “Where you end up will be amazing and worth the journey.”

Tommy looks at the card again and then back at Robyn. He smiles and nods. “Huh. I suppose, as long as there’s a worthwhile payoff on the other end…”

“Well,” Robyn say, “it’s not like we have a whole lot of choice in these things.”

“You don’t believe in free will?” Adam asks, leaning back beside Tommy, his arm going  
into place along the back of Tommy’s chair.

“I do, but I have found over the years that trying to fight against what is coming inevitably causes more pain. Better to face the cards head on, make the most of the lessons life brings you and keep breathing.”

“Makes sense I guess,” Tommy says. He picks up the sun card and looks at the figures dancing under the sun. They do look kind of happy. If that’s the end result, he guesses he can live with whatever’s coming.

 

~~~~

 

_Robyn watches Tommy as he looks at the Sun card. To her inner sight he appears wreathed in light, a golden god come through the fire. She looks down at his hands and the light shimmers even brighter. She hears music and smiles._

 

“You ready babe?” Adam asks.

They are in Adam’s dressing room, which the troupe immediate dubbed the honeymoon suite when Adam insisted that Tommy got to change in there with him for this show.

It’s not the official first concert of the new tour but it’s close. It’s the Nokia promo concert that RCA and 19E promised Adam when sales of the third album exploded within a month of the album’s release. It’s also the concert Adam promised Tommy and the band when John Denner pronounced Tommy “ready to rock!”

Tommy looks into the mirror at Adam and grins. His stomach is a mass of butterflies, but oh yeah, he’s ready!

Adam wraps his arms around Tommy’s waist, pulling him close and kisses his neck. Tommy can feel the imprint of fresh lipstick and glitter on his skin and it makes his heart race just a little.

He rubs his hand along the scarlet leather of Adam’s sleeves, feeling the rhinestones bump and slide under his fingers. At the cuff, he lets his hand stroke across Adam’s skin until he can clasp Adams fingers and draw his hand closer around his body.

In the mirror they look like one of those nesting dolls Adam picked up on the European leg of the last tour; Adam in his red and black coat draping to the floor, sparkling in the lights as they rock together, Tommy in black, resting tight within the circle of Adam’s arms.

For this tour Adam had insisted that Tommy wear something a little more formal for his costume. Since the infamous “Gay Christmas Elf” coat had gone over ever so well, and he’d only worn the other jacket a few times, preferring freedom of movement over warmth, and long sleeves weren’t really an option now anyway, the guys at Skingraft had designed him a long black vest that hangs nearly to his knees. They’d also set him up with the sweetest pair of black leather pants he’d ever owned and a black silk shirt custom built with one long sleeve and one short. There’s scarlet leather trim on the vest and pants to match Adam’s coat, and scarlet and black “A”s worked into the design of his Denner pick-rig covering his right arm. Tommy has to admit that the whole thing is pretty classy and a lot more put-together looking than his last costume.

“What?” Tommy asks, looking at Adam’s eyes, they’ve gone dark and shadowed where they had been bright and full a joy a moment ago.

Adam shakes his head and kisses the side of Tommy’s face. Tommy twists around in Adam’s arms to see Adam more clearly.

“Talk to me.”

“It’s just…” Adam closes his eyes and Tommy can feel Adam shivering. “It’s been so long. Took so long to get here. So much has happened.”

Tommy quirks his lips just a little. “Isn’t that supposed to be my line?”

Adam chuckles softly and nods, dislodging tears that trail down his cheeks.

“Hey,” Tommy says, nudging Adam’s head up with his nose, refusing to unlock his hand and arm from around Adam’s back. “Long or short, hard or soft, we’re here. Right?”

Adam nods. “Right.”

“Right! So let’s tart this bitch up!”

That gets Adam laughing. “Abso-fucking-lutely!”

 

***

 

Standing in the darkness just off stage, Adam can hear the crowd chanting for him, hell he can _feel_ them pounding the floor, calling out to him with their bodies and souls. Seven thousand people filling the Nokia Theater, not the Club this time, but the theater, and all of them here to see Adam. A guy could live for a lifetime on that thought alone.

He presses his fingers to the infinity tattoo on his wrist and closes his eyes. Taking a deep breath he concentrates on focusing the energy spiraling around him into a controlled loop that will weave back and forth between the audience and himself. The energy fights him at first, resists the shift until it feels the well-worn paths built over several hundred concerts. Adam whispers to it, coaxes it into the familiar dance until the energy settles and he feels lit up from inside, burning to sing and dance and fuck every living thing on earth. He drops his hands and lets out a laugh.

This is the place he loves most, on stage with the music and the energy. Moving in the lights and, yes, the glitter. He’s been through the whole ‘drug phase’ thing, tried more than he ever admitted to Ryan Seacrest or any reporter, but nothing, _nothing_ compares to this feeling. God, he’s missed this.

A firm grip on his shoulder lets him know that Monte is ready, they all are. Adam opens his eyes, smiles at his old friend and nods. In the darkness, Adam can just make out Monte’s return grin, it’s feral and half-mad, just like they all are right now. Mad with the need to let open the flood gates.

The crowd explodes as they see the band take their places on stage and Adam smiles again, little do they know what Adam has in store for them tonight.

Monte leads off, Matt and Isaac following with Cam right on their heels. Notes high and bright with chaotic joy. A few more bars, a few more teases of songs from the past and the dancers ripple into place.

Monte brings the band to the next beat and then holds them there, waiting. The whole theater waits. It feels like everyone is holding its breath, then Adam steps into the spotlight, mic in hand, and lets the roar of the crowd fill him.

 

***

The screaming of the crowd is insane, even from the wings, protected by the walls of the theater and the heavy velvet curtains. Tommy is finding it hard to breathe, the feeling more than a little overwhelming.

It’s been a long time since he’s been on a stage and the last time it was for considerably smaller crowd than this one. They use this theater for the fucking Grammys and Emmy awards for fuck’s sake! Plus there are the usual ton of people and then-some running around back stage, technicians and roadies, handlers and VIPs, Lane and Sutan, the list is endless and exhausting. It was one thing to think about doing this in the safety of their living room with just Adam, or even Monte and the rest of the band jamming, but this? This has him doubting everything.

He wipes his hand on his leg for like the tenth time and steadies his bass with his stump. The strap’s higher than it used to be for shows, missing a hand and all that. He was certain that it would be okay at this height but now, listening to the guys play, hearing Matt hold down the bass-line, he’s not so sure. Maybe this isn’t the time. Maybe this was a really bad idea.

 _Damn._ The butterflies in his stomach have turned to lead.

Tommy’s about to turn away from the stage, to tell Lane that he can’t do this, that they’ll just have to skip his intro and move on with the rest of the show, when a warm body presses up behind him.

“Hey, Tommy Joe,” says a welcome voice in his ear. He turns and looks up, not that he needs confirmation of who it is. He’d know those arms and that voice anywhere, but right now he needs to see.

Sutan smiles and kisses his forehead. “It’s gonna be okay.”

Tommy nods his head sharply once and swallows something that feels dangerously close to a sob.

Sutan hugs him close. “It will be. You are going to kill it out there. I have faith in you. We all do.”

Tommy nods again, closes his eyes and sinks into Sutan’s embrace. He lets the music wash over him. Sutan’s right. Tommy knows this. It’s just the size of the crowd that has him freaking and it shouldn’t. This is no different than any other night. It’s jamming with the guys and fucking around with Adam. Okay, fine so he’s in costume and tarted up to high hell, but that’s fun too.

He can do this. He can.

He strokes his fingers up the neck of his bass, picking up the notes along with Matt, playing the song like he will be playing it when the tour starts for real, when Matt hands off the gig to him.

And _oh shit,_ there are the butterflies again.

Tommy takes a deep breath. He makes himself focus on the moment, on Sutan holding him, on the bass in his arms, on Adam’s voice soaring through the theater. This is where he wants to be, what he’s fought so hard for. No batch of overactive fucking butterflies is taking it away from him now!

 

***

As the last song of the opening set ends Adam steps into the wings for his first costume change. This one’s brief, switching out the long coat for a shorter version with less Glam and more Goth to it. He kicks off his boots and slides into the second pair that the costume assistant has waiting for him. These come up over his knees, black leather and covered, ankle to thigh, in silver buckles. Thank god for the zipper in the back. He wiggles his toes to settle his feet and holds out his hand for the riding crop.

Sutan grabs his chin, dabs at the sweat and then quickly touches up his eyeliner and lipstick. “You’re good to go,” he says with a nod.

Adam grins, looks over Sutan’s shoulder at Tommy and winks. This is the part he has been waiting for all night.

“Let’s do this,” he says with a growl, and stalks back onto the stage into a flurry of chords and key changes.

Adam prowls the stage, letting the audience see him in the new costume and wonder what he’s up to as the band plays snatches of tunes off of “For Your Entertainment”. He can feel the tension in the crowd. He’s never kept them waiting like this, wondering.

He stalks toward the center of the stage and then right down to the front lip and looms over the edge, grinning like a maniac at them. They scream back at him. He tosses his head back and laughs in pure delight and love for everything they are, then throws his hands out. Monte pulls the band in, drawing the notes down and bringing silence to the stage.

Adam brings his mic to his lips and starts the next part of the show.

“Hello, LA!”

Seven thousand voices shout _hello_ back at him.

“So, how’d you like our new digs?” He spreads his arms out and turns from one side of the stage to other, looking at the vast expanse of the Nokia Theater’s neon trim glowing in the darkness before him.

The audience screams and yells, making their approval very clear.

Adam laughs. “Yeah, we like it too!”

He can hear Monte chuckle behind him as Isaac tosses off a couple of beats, quick and dirty.

“Well, you all might remember that the last time we played here was for the American Music Awards when I… kinda kissed this guy I like.” He has to pause while the crowd all but screams themselves hoarse. “So, it’s pretty fucking amazing to be back here now celebrating my third album and getting ready to start our third tour!”

He can tell the audience knows he’s up to something now, they keep cheering, but the sound is filled with anticipation.

“But you know, it wouldn’t be a full tour without all the members of my band. Don’t get me wrong, I love Matt.”

Adam turns and smiles at Matt, who bows, knowing all about this part of the show. If any of the crowd has actually looked at the program for the night they would see that Matt is listed as a guest performer, not as a full band member. Tonight is the night he knew was coming, the night he handed Tommy back his position as Adam’s bassist.

“Matt is one bad ass bass guitar player and an amazing friend and I can’t thank him enough for being a part of our show. But there’s this other guy…”

The audience’s screams drown Adam out for a moment with their hope.

“This other guy has been ours from the beginning, and no car accident was going to take him from us!”

He just smiles as the roar overwhelms everything.

Adam looks over his shoulder at Monte. Monte nods and leads the band into the opening lines of “Lay Me Down”.

Adam turns back to the crowd and he knows his grin has to be enormous. “You know you just can’t keep a good cat down…,” Adam flourishes his arm out toward the stage right wings and crooks his finger. “Here, kitty kitty.”

 

***

Tommy laughs as Adam beckons to him from center stage. Adam hadn’t told him he was going to do the whole kitty kitty thing, but what the hell. Tommy saunters on stage, setting his fingers to the frets and his pick-rig to the strings as he moves and slides into place next to Adam. If Tommy thought the crowd was loud before, its nothing compared to the welcome that greets him.

With a grin and a quick shredding of strings, Matt steps up to Adam’s other side. Tommy and Matt share a look across Adam’s chest and then between them, Tommy and Matt launch into the throbbing baseline of Tommy’s song and send it out into the audience over their screams.

Adam drapes one arm over Tommy’s shoulder as he sings and it’s just like it used to be, even if it’s completely different at the same time. Tommy doesn’t stop to wonder what the crowd thinks of his arm, he just plays and it feels amazing. It feels better than amazing.

It feels like home.


	12. Epilogue - Before you break

Epilogue - Before you break

_Before you break, you have to shed your armor,_  
Take a step and fall into the glitter  
Tell a stranger that they’re beautiful  
So all you feel is – love

\- “Aftermath” by Ferras Alqaisi, Adam Lambert, Alisan Porter, Ely Weisfield

 

Everything about the day was running long and Adam was sick of it. The “mini” concert – what a joke – nothing about _that_ twenty minutes of his life had been small or short or easy, had been an hour late and not because of anything he did, thank you very much. That of course pushed all of the interviews back, which pushed the photo shoot back, which pushed dinner back which pushed the next round of interviews back because Lane loved him and refused to send him to the wolves without a proper break for food and downtime between bouts of insanity.

Now it was the gods only knew what time in the evening. He had yet another interview to do, and Michelle had been amazing, or so Lane kept telling him, about waiting, so no, really he couldn’t put her off until tomorrow. All he really wanted to do was go home and crawl into his massive tub, the one he’d rented his house for – the one he almost never got to use now because of all the damn promo work.

And oh, look he’s getting all bitchy diva on himself, great.

Adam takes a deep breath.

He’d made his choice years ago. He’d asked the universe and every god he could think of for this life and then worked his ass of to make sure he could get it, and he had. So he could just suck it up and deal. A bunch of long days and not lounging in his heavenly tub or getting to go out dancing with his friends was a small price to pay for getting everything you dreamed of and then some.

_Shit._

He needs to call Tommy and let him know he is not going to make it to the club tonight after all. Digging his phone out of his pocket he pulls up Tommy’s contact info and hits send. He gets a burst of sound when the call connects then Tommy shouting in his ear.

“Adam?!”

“Hey-“

“Where the fuck are you?”

“Still at the studio.”

“No way.”

Adam laughs. “Way.”

“That sucks!”

“Yeah.”

“Ditch’em! And get your ass over here!” Tommy giggles.

Adam smiles fondly, Tommy is such a cute drunk. He can hear Taylor in the background shouting for Adam to join them at the club. The two of them are clearly well on their way to being drunk, and from the sound of it, have plenty of friends with them to keep them entertained.

“I can’t. Lane would hack me into little bits.”

“Oh! That would be bad.” Tommy drawls. “We know how you like your bits. Heck we all like your bits. Big and small.”

“You’re drunk Tommy Joe.” Adam laughs and settles back in his chair. His little corner of the studio is a quiet oasis and in a sea of chaos.

“Kinda, yeah.”

“You’re taking a cab home, right?”

“In this weather? Fuck yeah. Not getting rain on my new jacket. Some bitchy diva rock star I know would smack my ass if I did.”

“What ass?” Adam says with a smile.

“Hey! I have an ass!”

“Sure you do,” Adam says. “Have fun.”

“M’kay.”

“I’ll see you tomorrow.”

“Not too early! I’mma be sleeping.”

“I’ll bring coffee.”

“Oh. Yeah. Coffee.” There’s a loud noise and then Tommy’s back. “Sorry, dropped the phone.”

Adam laughs and shakes his head. Silly drunk kitty. “Jeez. Whatever. Have fun.”

“Night.”

Adam disconnects the call and slips the phone back into his pocket and with a grin. Tommy is going to be so hung over in the morning. Maybe he’ll bring over bagels as well as coffee to be nice. Bright and early, just to see the look on Tommy’s face when Adam wakes him up. Good thing they each have keys to the other’s places. Adam doubts Tommy will be coherent enough to hear the doorbell.

“Adam?” Lane calls from the other side of the room. “Five minutes.”

He nods. “Okay, thanks.”

Adam pushes himself out of his chair.

It’s been a long day, but totally worth it, and tomorrow – tomorrow is a rare and lovely day off. Adam plans to enjoy that. Starting with tormenting his bassist with an early morning wake up call.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Authors Notes:
> 
> First of all, thank you all for your wonderful comments and support of this story. You are all amazing.
> 
> The idea for a story like this, something that explores the nature of loss and grief around illness and trauma has been in my head for a while now. As someone who has been coming to terms with being disabled due to illness, I have been through some of what I put Tommy through. Some of his words are actually mine from early in my healing process. Apparently, like many an artist, I needed to put those emotions out there through my work.
> 
> Thinking over the year that TJR has had it struck me that he was the perfect vehicle for this idea. He has literally stepped up to the top of his dream mountain. He has everything he says he ever dreamed of. So what happens to someone when all of that is taken away? How do they cope? And presuming they do manage to cope, can they build a new life and come out the other side stronger for having come through the fire? I like to think the answer is yes, but it’s an individual journey, so only the one walking it can be certain. This is my vision of how one such journey might go.
> 
> In answer to the inevitable question, yes, I did know some of the cards I was going to use going into this story, specifically the Tower, the Nine of Cups, and the Sun. I had picked out four other cards that turned out to be the wrong cards for the story/reading, so those along with the remaining three, ended up being chosen via divination. Yup, I did a set of tarot readings to get “Tommy” to tell me which cards fit which chapters of the story. Weird, but there we are. I knew each time when a card was wrong because I just could not find the thread of the story, and when a card was right because suddenly I was seeing and hearing the story unfold in my head almost faster than I could make notes.
> 
> And finally, as some of you probably know by now, I am a researcher and footnoter by habit so all my longer works have lots of files and notes associated with them. This story is no exception. Below is a list of references and links used in creating this story that I thought other people might find interesting and/or beneficial. If you want more information on something I haven’t listed here drop me a note and I’ll be happy to pass on what I have.
> 
> References:  
> Thoth Tarot deck, by Aleister Crowley, artwork by Lady Freda Harris  
> The Book of Thoth, by Aleister Crowley  
> Instructions for the Thoth Tarot deck, by James Wasserman  
> The Tarot Handbook: practical applications of ancient visual symbols, by Angeles Arrien  
> 21 Ways to Read a Tarot Card, by Mary K. Greer
> 
> Links:
> 
> John Denner:  
> http://johndennerrocks.com  
> http://johndenner.wordpress.com  
> http://www.youtube.com/watch?annotation_id=annotation_387540&feature=iv&v=jjjkdaPNnzY
> 
> Prosthetics & Arm Development Work  
> http://gamefwd.org/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=154:researchers-use-guitar-hero-game-to-aid-prosthetic-arm-development&catid=6:technology&Itemid=44 – Guitar Hero article in GameFwd  
> http://www.gamecritics.com/tera-kirk/guitar-hero-helps-calibrate-prostthetic-arms - Guitar Hero article in Game Critics  
> http://openprosthetics.org/  
> http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/8190296.stm Injured marine's guide to new limbs - A great video featuring British marine Mark Ormrod, who lost an arm and both legs in 2007.
> 
> http://www.reachoutmichigan.org/funexperiments/agesubject/lessons/newton/prosthetic05.html - Upper Limb Prosthetics  
> http://www.explainthatstuff.com/prosthetic-artificial-limbs.html - Site that explains in simple terms the components of a prosthetic limb and some of the process involved in getting one.
> 
> Support Groups  
> http://www.amputee-coalition.org/ Amputee Coalition of America  
> http://www.limbless-association.org/ Limbless Association UK-based support organization.
> 
> Grief and healing:  
> http://healthlibrary.epnet.com/GetContent.aspx?token=a4c1f00b-d245-44f2-a90e-20b047f84a6a&chunkiid=80152 - Grieving: a Normal Part of the Healing Process  
> http://changingminds.org/disciplines/change_management/kubler_ross/kubler_ross.htm  
> \- The Kübler-Ross grief cycle
> 
> Tarot:  
> Good reference site for researching different decks and card meanings  
> http://www.aeclectic.net/tarot/  
> Several public domain documents about Tarot (also a great site in general for all things sacred)  
> http://www.sacred-texts.com/tarot/index.htm  
> SF/Bay Area local Tarot group that rocks  
> http://www.dodivination.com/  
> Mary K. Greer’s Tarot Blog  
> http://marygreer.wordpress.com
> 
>  
> 
> Tommy Joe Ratliff:  
> After all the angst in this story I figure this just really needs to be celebrated:
> 
> Tommy jamming at the Jarrell Guitars booth at NAMM January 2010  
> http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1Y_ggYmyf4k&feature=youtu.be


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